SOUTH WINS CIVIL WAR

I would think that a more appropriate question would be what would the world be like.

Slavery was dead on it's feet. It had stagnated or declined in the old, coastal south, but was revived with a vengeance after the Creek War, when Alabama and Mississippi were opened to settlement. The worst abuses which have come to be associated in the public's mind with that institution were magnified in that region, as speculators rushed to acquire land, and healthy young men and women, whom they were willing to literally work to death.

But by 1860, a young, healthy adult male, suitable as a field hand, sold for about $2000. This was the price of the most expensive saddle horses--the point not being to compare a human to a horse, but to show that the formerly exploited "deep south" cotton equation could not hold up. At prices such as those, callous agricultural speculators could not longer make a quick profit, or any profit at all, by snapping up cheap land and bringing in a host of cheap labor to exploit that land--the labor was no longer cheap.

The political weight of numbers at the north had also already circumscribed the range to which slavery could be exported within the country. The south howled, because the institution could only be made to pay with an unending source of exploitable land. This was, of course, one of the root causes of the civil war. Southerners had supported the Mexican War eagerly, in the belief that large new tracts of land would be opened to slavery. When this result failed to materialize, tensions grew rapidly. When Dred Scott was sent back into slavery, by Chief Justice Taney as many northerners saw it, the same sort of resentment grew at the north.

All of which is to say that, with the failure of Lincoln to gain re-election as the only criterion, had the South been able to survive the war, and the North have come to terms on the principle proposed by Winfield Scott at the beginning of the war: "Go wayward sisters," the South would have sunken into economic senescence. It is likely at some point, that slavery would have been abolished in the South because it were no longer viable. The government was certainly an ineffective organ, and further fragmentation, with some return to the Union by some states, would not have been at all improbable. The growth of the economic power of the United States may have been termporarily stunted, but not permanently so, and not greatly so.

The effect on the rest of what was our world then--Europe and the European empires--would have been significant, however for both practical and ideological reasons. As well, Europe would have affected the United States and the Confederate States. Napoleon III had ambitions wherever he could get away with having ambitions. Palmerston hated the United States irrationally. But the people of England and France in that era, were great and expressive admirers of Abraham Lincoln. The textile industry was the largest productive sector in both nations at that time. There is every likelihood that mill workers in England would have refused to return to work in mills supplied with Southern cotton. Mill owners had already scrambled to develop new sources for cotton, and Egypt had begun to produce it significant quantities. England might well have asserted here hegemony over Egypt and the Sudan a generation earlier with this as a stimulus. When Ghandi called on Indians not to buy imported clothing or stuffs, not only did English mill workers (the working class group with the longest history of struggle for unionization and civil rights) not protest, when Ghandi visited England, they turned out in any weather to cheer him. There is every good reason to assume they might well have behaved that way with regard to Southern cotton. Had this been the case, this would, of course, have accelerated economic decline in the South, and the collapse of slavery. Whether or not French mill workers would have behaved similarly, i wouldn't care to speculate. I would point out, however, that the reason people like Palmerston loathed the United States, and people such as English mill workers idolized Abraham Lincoln, was the character of the United States was then seen as the shining beacon of personal liberty about which our politicians still mouth platitudes--which in our lifetimes is greated with considerable scorn in the rest of the world. Then, however, the United States had provided a haven for Poles who had been crushed in revolutions serveral times by mid-century. The rest of Europe had convulsed in the socialist uprisings of 1848, and many Germans and Italians headed for the U.S. then. When the potato failed, and the English allowed the Irish to starve, while the Prussians, Austrians and Russians allowed the Poles to starve, many of those two groups made the crossing as well. The rolls of the United States Volunteers in that war are full of those immigrants and their sons and grandsons. It is very likely that, ideologically, the United States might have come out of it smelling like a rose. The Old South would certainly have appealled to propagandists as a type for Aristocratic oppression, and it would have been easy to characterize the failure of the North to prosecute the war to a successful conclusion to the venality and elitism of propertied classes in the North. Whether or not that were true would matter not one bit to socialists in Europe.

A possible effect of such an outcome could have been a hardening of revolutionary attitudes in Europe, which already vibrated with the tensions of the failed 1848 risings. As for the United States, i think it highly likely that it would have been eventually reunited, and would have continued upon a similar course to the one which actually took place, little hindered by a sorrowful event of that character.

It is also worth questioning what the effect might have been on Mexico, if Napoleon III had not been presented with the threat of an intervention by the United States. Would he have taken renewed courage for the seemingly endless struggle, and poured more troops and money into propping up Maximilien? Would he have been successful in twisting Leopold's arm into doing the same with Belgian troops and resources?

I've not read any of the speculative works or novels on this subject that i've seen. In casually perusing their jackets and contents in book stores, it has always seemed to me that they were adolescent exercises in imagination, spurred by a "wouldn't it be neat if" attitude toward the image of Southern arms triumphant. The South could never have won that war, only the North could have failed to win it.

I think that pretty much says it all.

The world would be a different place as the US would not enjoy the power it now has.

Thinking of how the south could have won the civil war would be an interesting exercise in and of itself. What would the world/US be like today? The US as we know it would not exist. The south would have divided into at least two countries (probably Texas and maybe surrounding southern states would have left the CSA). Sucession would be deemed a legal and constitutional way to settle disputes between the states and the federal government. The US would have divided further into 2 or 3 additional countries (New England/northeas, Midwest, Pacific coast?). The US would not have had the military, political, or industrial might to assist the western powers during WWI to anything more than a stalemate. Since Germany would not have been defeated, Hitler would not have come to power, and the holocaust may not have happened. WWII would have been another war more similar to WWI. Europe would have 3 powers Britain, German, and Russia. Japan would have control of the western pacific rim, if not the entire pacific except the North and South American costs. The US (and other countries created from former American States) would be stable democracies and get along well diplomatically with each other (similar heritage, history, culture, religion-its usually these differences that lead to strife, the US Civil War is rare in that respect and why we were able to re-unify relatively easily). These countries would be similar to the western European democracies of today. On the world stage they would not be diplomatic or military powerhouses however. That's my thought...there are many other scenarios that could be played out depending on how far you take the "what if this/then that" scenarios, all plausible.

Setanta - I agree with you in most respects - manumission in the Caribbean serves as a pretty good example of a slavery-based economic model collapsing. I don't think anything is etched in stone, though - the South is HUGE compared to most European countries. Much would have depended on whether or not they abandoned exhaustive agricultural methods. The South stagnated for a hundred more years because capital investments in railroads, and manufacturing by extension, favored the north. Much would have depended on whether or not lenders saw the Confederacy as a stable, economically sound political environment. As a Protestant country, it would have had more going for it than South America as Protestants tend to be more prudent leaders. Slavery ended in Brazil in 1888, and that country was marked by a reliance on the military to uphold class priviledge.

Colonization became tricky for the British in the late 1940's with the advent of the automatic rifle. One thing the British did to maintain their Caribbean colonies was to send in Indians to settle. Textile based economies today are among the poorest in the world, and societies where slavery is practiced are poorer still. However, The white population in the south was not in as precarious a situation as, for example, that in Algeria or Rhodesia. One major question people fail to ask is whether or not the US would have accepted and encouraged black immigration. The current rich suburb/poor ghetto dichotomy could have been averted entirely.

The north would probably have taken in more 1848-style European social initiatives as a racially homogenous white European country, and might have developed UK/Canadian style social institutions because they would have lacked a negro minority who could be seen as sucking in benefits. The north would have continued to be racist in the pre-1860 'send 'em back to Africa' sense.

Russia might have been able to contain Germany, but the Germans might have not bothered with Russia if they'd been able to take Britain. The Lend-Lease agreement was instrumental in providing Britain with military equipment. However, a Central Powers victory in WWI could have resulted in some sort of Austria-Germany economic collaboration or conflict. It would have been good for Eastern Europe.

usa would be in total disarray
if the south would have won the civil war, the u.s. would be in total disarray, it would have been up for grabs from all other countries, the u.s. would be back in the pre-revolutionary times because all the industry was in the north, the u.s. would have to "reinvent the wheel" so chew on that and let me know

Setanta,

You speculate the to nations would reunite. I question this. It seems to me that the two countries (The former Union North and the Confederate South) are still greatly divided on cultural and religious lines.

Are there any other examples of similar nations reuniting after a civil war with a similar divide in culture?

I doubt there would have been any more divisions. The Constitution as it has bene applied has been pretty good for all areas outside of the Confederate South.

I also question how much weaker the United States would be. Obviously it would be smaller, but the industrial revolution was widely Northern, and there was enough agriculture as well to still be a world economic (and thus military) world power-- perhaps not quite the same magnitude.

I would guess we could have had a similar role in Europe that we have had for the last century.

I feel that pragmatic political considerations would trump those issues. Mill workers in England and France idolized Lincoln, so that Palmerston, despite his nearly irrational hatred of the United States, could not safely declare in favor of the Confederacy. Napoleon III tried his empire building venture in Mexico, and it was coming apart at the seams before Grant ever sent troops to the Rio Grande. Despite bitter differences, the relative (and only relative) liberal attitudes of England and France had driven them into de facto alliance in opposition to the Holy Alliance of Prussia, Austria and Russia. Their people would not have tolerated an alliance with a slave state. New sources of cotton were already being developed because of the war, and the economy of the South was doomed. Eventually, simple safety in a hostile world would have at least assured military cooperation. Many Southerners had looked longingly at the Spanish possessions in the Caribean, but absent an effective navy, they were in no position to challenge Spain. Their cotton monoculture was doomed, and therefore so was slavery--they had only held on as long as they did by constant expansion, which would in such an event have been closed to them. It may have been later rather than sooner, but i believe that re-unification would have been inevitable.



France and Burgundy after the Hundred Years War immediately springs to mind. China after the collapse of the Later Han Dynasty fragmented into what are known as the Three Kingdoms, although it was reunitied as much by conquest as by common interest. The unification of Germany under Bismark also could serve as an example. Those people--divided between Catholic and Protestant, divided north and south, with all the predictable stereotypes about culture and spoken accents--knew ultimately upon which side their economic and political bread was buttered.



There was a genuine fear that such a further fragmentation would have resulted at that time. This is a point on which i feel less certain, but it is worth noting that New England had often been at odds with the rest of the nation on national policy and war, and Massachusetts considered secession on more than one occassion before that war. A definite problem would have been the several states using the threat of secession as a stick to beat the Federal government. But, as i say, this is one matter on which i am less sure.



I believe it would definitely have been weaker, from reduced population, from a drastically reduced coast line (consider the coast from the Virginia Capes to the Rio Grande, and then compare that to the stretch from the Virginia Capes to New Brunswick--that's quite a difference) which would have had a profound effect on both local and international trade. One of the biggest squabbles between North and South before the war had to do with the tariff. Northern manufacturing interests wanted a tariff to protect their markets, and Southern planters wanted no tariff so as to continue to enjoy the low prices of European manufacturers who practiced what is today known as dumping, as well as the continued use of European vested interests to buy their tobacco and cotton and provide goods in return--usually a case of casual theft, but Southern planters still were addicted to the convenience and the cachet of European goods. While it is true that Northern manufacturers had a poweful and growing market due to immigration, they still would have had a major loss of markets. And finally, even after the death of slavery and King Cotton, Northern business interests benefited mightily from the soft woods and agricultural products of the South, and the South had little choice about what to sell and where to sell it with the collapse of their credit institutions and their primary monoculture. Additionally, the South had long been a major producer of beef ("Georgia cracker" derives from "whipcracker," because small holders in south Georgia and in Florida commonly drove their herds to market using only a few riders and bullwhips to encourage the live stock). The South would still have had markets for their beef and pork--early in the development of that industry, the Spanish Caribean colonies and in particular Cuba (and hence the dramatic growth of Tampa) had been their primary markets. The cattle industry romanticized in the classic American Western began after the war, and began in Texas. Eventually the source would have been replaced, but it would have been yet another serious economic hardship for the North, and which would mitigate against dramatic population growth through immigration. The North would have either lacked those raw materials, or would have been obliged to pay a premium which they did not suffer during reconstruction.



Perhaps, although without the dramatic population growth which derived from heavy immigration, neither our economy nor our military would have been as impressive. Europe suffered a seriously debilitating economic depression--not recession, in European history it is known as the Great Depression--from 1875 to 1893. That's a hell of a long depression, and the slide began even before 1875. The United States and Canada largely did not suffer because Europeans with investment capital simply transferred their active liquid assets to North American investments. A smaller United States would have had a smaller share, and if immigration had been reduced, that share would have been even more reduced.

That's the problem with historical "what ifs"--all the best information can only give us a pretty good, but still incomplete view of what did happen. To my mind, there are no sign posts to what might have been, and i believe that far fewer events were inevitable than others suppose--for example, i've never believed the American Revolution was inevitable, while i am certain that Napoleon's invasion of and defeat in Russia was inevitable as conditions were in 1812. But the bad blood which grew so rapidly between the American colonies and London after 1763 were entirely a product of incredible stupidity by the early ministries of George III. Given that point of view, i am usually loathe to speculate in such matters. I do think, however, that purely in the realm of speculation, these results would have arisen in the event that the North failed to win the War. Although the defeat of the South was not necessarily inevitable, the South could never have won the war--the only salvation for their foolishness would have occured if the North failed to win it.

Having awakened in the middle of the night, and been restless, i failed to make something clear when writing the previous post (that's my excuse, and i'm stickin' to it). My first post speculates from an assumption that the states would reunite, and therefore the economic consequences would not have been that significant. However, in the response to E_Brown's post, i speculated from his reasonable proposition that the states might not have reunited, and in such a case, i think it would have worked an economic hardship on both North and South. That is, of course, the reason i believe that they would have reunited, sooner or later.

I am pretty sure that had I been alive at the time (assuming that as I was in my present life, I was born and raised in the North) that I would have opposed the Civil war. I would have wanted the North to let the South go.

With it's industrial base and educated populace I am quite confident the North would have done just fine.

We would have had to find some way to stop those pesky immigrants crossing the Mason-Dixon line.

You'd have had to replace the livestock for the meat industry which you would be losing, and you'd have had to do it lickitysplit, because absent government fiat, you weren't going to get cheap beef and pork from farmers eager to exploit a new market. You'd have had to find a new source for tobacco, or pay through the nose. You'd have had to find a new source for cotton for the textile mills, the premier industrial sector at the North, or pay through the nose. You'd have had to find a new source for indigo, once again for the textile industry, or pay through the nose. In short, you assume that things would have not changed much, as though North and South revolved in separate and uncommunicating orbits.

Doesn't the US currently have free trade with Canada and Mexico? (I may be getting my facts completely wrong.) But if they do, would the North have had free trade with the South? (I just got back from visiting Manassas today so I'm in a Civil War discussion mood. )

I doubt it, OG. Before the war, a constant source of political strife between North and South was the tariff. Northerners wanted high import duties to protect their manufactured goods from Euopean competition (England and France were willing to practice "dumping"--selling their goods at little or no profit, or even a loss--in order to drive out American competition). Southerners wanted low to no import duties so that they could continue to buy cheap European goods as they had done before the Revolution. They also did not want European nations to retaliate by enacting high import duties on their agricultural production--i.e., tobacco and cotton.

I am not saying that there would or would not have been "free trade" in such a situation. However, the South would have been motivated to make trade deals with European nations, and not with the North.

Just to jump in for a moment - the Swiss still have the oldest Confederecy and a Republic (400 years), like the Old South proposed. The US would not be centralized and thus so powerful as it is now, which would be a good thing. It would be more like the provinces here in Canada where each province has autonomy.

There are cultural differences that are quite striking between north and south even today: religion, linguistics, food preferences.

The reasoning behind the Civil War was to centralize the government, and to make sure the railroads ran through the northern route rather than the southern route (Lincoln was a railroad lawyer). It wasn't about slavery, in fact - ole Abe didn't give a fig about slavery. I have a quote somewhere from Abe about slavery (paraphrase): 'if it meant freeing none of the slaves or all of the slaves he would do it to preserve the union' One book that is worth reading is The Real Lincoln.

Just to jump in for a moment - the Swiss still have the oldest Confederecy and a Republic (400 years), like the Old South proposed. The US would not be centralized and thus so powerful as it is now, which would be a good thing. It would be more like the provinces here in Canada where each province has autonomy.

There are cultural differences that are quite striking between north and south even today: religion, linguistics, food preferences.

The reasoning behind the Civil War was to centralize the government, and to make sure the railroads ran through the northern route rather than the southern route (Lincoln was a railroad lawyer). It wasn't about slavery, in fact - ole Abe didn't give a fig about slavery. I have a quote somewhere from Abe about slavery (paraphrase): 'if it meant freeing none of the slaves or all of the slaves he would do it to preserve the union' One book that is worth reading is The Real Lincoln.
BTW - free trade does not work too well for either Canada or Mexico. It does benefit the US. I've seen what it does to jobs in Canada; not good.

Has anyone read The Real Lincoln?

I have lived in the south all of my 57 years. Believe it or not the war is still being fought in parts of it. There are areas where confederate flags out number any other. To think the South would have rejoined the north is crazy. The people of the south were beaten up for sure, but they would have made a comeback quicker than during reconstruction.

People seem to forget the textile industry in the south flourished in the later part of the 1800's and through the last century until a few years ago when the jobs all went to Mexico and China. Most of the worlds furniture was made here in NC until it went to China also. So to believe the south would have only relied on agriculture is a joke. Investors from around the world would have financed the new industrial south. The north would have had difficulty supplying enough agriculture to feed their people and would have had to import it from the south at high prices.

With the two separate countries the land grab would have been on for land west of the Mississippi. No doubt there would have been other disagreements between the North and South and possibly more war.

I don't know what the world would look like. I just know the southern people are still a fierce people, except for all the northerners who have moved here over the past 150+ years. ( Ever notice when northern people move south they never move back?) My ancestors were from the mountains of northern Ga and never owned slaves. The coastal planter gentry may have petered out. I doubt it though because their decendents still run things in those areas.

So do I wish the south would have won the war, you bet. I enjoy the easy going southern life and all it entails. If we could have kept out northern immigration I believe it would have been even better. Notice all the universities we have here? To believe somehow the southern people would be a bunch of dumb uneducated rednecks is a fantasy. Sure there are plenty of them here, but they are a minority.

These are just my humble thoughts about a way of life that has been watered down.

Truly,
RB Bryan Phd

A "textile industry" only flourished in the South because of investment from the North. Southern planters were in the same relationship with European suppliers before the Civil War as they had been before the Revolution. They ordered manufactured goods on credit, to be reconciled with the revenues of their production, and they were shamelessly robbed in London and Paris for the raw materials they produced. There would have been little to no investment capital for a textile industry, unless it were foreign investment, which does little for anyone in the South if slavery is still in operation. In effect, it would only have created 19th century latifundia in the southern states. The institution of slavery assured that small holders and small craftsmen were choked out of every local market, and anyone in the South with ambition and energy, who weren't a part of the slave-owning aristocracy, could only have found his fortune outside the South. In the South, a white man who owned no slaves and depended upon his own efforts competed with slaves, whose labor was sought preferentially by those with money in the South, either as being cheaper than free labor, or as being the labor of the class to which the potential customer belonged--the slave-owning class. To believe that anyone would have benefited from foreign investment in a South which continued to practice slave-driven agriculture is to display a profound ignorance of basic economics. To what markets would the South have sold textiles if it had remained a slave-dominated economy? Textile workers in England and France had refused to work if it meant using cotton produced in the slave-owning South after the beginning of the war, and the likelihood is they would have boycotted textiles from the same source--and unless the states of the North had bought textile production, they'd have had no market in which they could reasonably have competed. The North learned to do without production of any kind from the South for several years, they'd have done quite well without it permanently. Immigration into the North always was higher, and would have, as actually happened, continue to provide markets for the production of the North.

The North fed itself quite well without recourse to the agriculture from the South during the war, and the South was slowly starving. They could not adequately feed their own armies, it is absurd to erect fantasies about northern dependence on southern agriculture when the North could feed itself and the South could not.

The furniture, as well as the forestry industries of the late 19th century and 20th century South were the product of outside investment. Once again, who would have bothered to invest where no market could be seen? Absent the southern states, the manufacturers of the North would simply have expanded existing operations, with no reason to either invest in the South, nor buy their production.

The so-called Napoleon III would have supported the South--if he dared, which he didn't because of public opinion in France--because of his ludicrous imperial ambitions in North and South America. The only scope for him to violate the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine would be with a weakened United States, and in the event, the war gave the United States the largest, most modern navy in the world, without relying upon the resources of the South. Lord Palmerston had hated the United States all his life, long before there were any hint of war. That did not alter that the people of Great Britain despised the institution of slavery, and the textile workers there and in France would rather be thrown out of work rather than use southern cotton once the war had begun. The war made the cotton-growing industries of Egypt and India, and to this day, the long fibre cotton of Egypt is considered the best cotton in the world, and is preferred over anything that has ever been produced in North America. Palmerston may have hated the United States, but he couldn't make textile workers go to work in factories buying cotton from the South, and he couldn't make people buy either cotton from the South, nor textiles produced from cotton bought from the South.

The South would have sunken into a greater senescence than it experienced after the war which they lost. They would have been a pariah nation from whom no one wished to buy anything. There would have been no incentive to invest in the South when there would have been no market for their production. Apart from a very small class of slave-owners, no white Southerner would have had any future to look forward to at home. Any white man or woman from the South who had ambition and energy who was not a member of the class would have had to leave home to make his or her fortune. To try to claim that the South would have abolished slavery immediately after surviving such a war, in which hundreds of thousands died to preserve the institution would be an idiotic claim. Hag-ridden by slavery, the South would have all too soon learned a bitter lesson about where their money came from, and always had.

The South could never have won that war, they only could have survived it, and even that was highly unlikely. "What ifs" about such a result always necessarily ignore the relentless and remorseless energy with which the United States ground the Confederate States into the worthless filth which they had always been. Lincoln won the 1864 election precisely because the citizens of the North were willing to continue to make the sacrifice necessary to not just rid the nation of slavery, but of the phony aristocracy of the South. Your remarks show that you understand nothing of the economics of the time, nothing of the real value of southern agriculture (it had no value without European markets), and nothing of the agricultural and industrial potential of the North. You can make your case only by inhabiting a dream world with no relation to reality.

I'm a little confused, so it was Americans from the North who won the Civil War, because after reading the book "The South Will Rise Again, As Soon As I Find The Keys To My Pickup Truck", by noted southern historian, Bobby Sue Sisterscrewer, I was convinced it was the Middle East who had won the war, he kept making all these references to Jew York