If the Confederacy Won

[Augarundus]

Isn't it possible that a more gradual abolition of slavery would result in less oppression of blacks? If the south won, the people would be happier, and wouldn't need to find a scapegoat for the suffering, which in the case of the south, were blacks, resulting in the lynch mobs and other forms of discrimination. Slower and more gradualistic abolition throughout the later decades of the 19th Century and perhaps some level of compensation for the manumission of slaves would've made the people happier with black people being freed, and they wouldn't go around oppressing blacks and lynching them.

I could see this: a lot of racial tension was the product of the humiliation of the south at northern hands and the catastrophic poverty brought about by Union plunder of the south (the destruction of Georgia, especially Atlanta, for example). So it's possible that a South that was not culturally shattered by a military defeat and was not economically ravaged by war would also not be so racially divided as the South historically was. I guess it's a sort of chicken-and-egg question: Northern intervention attempted to address racial tensions in the south, but were those racial tensions only so severe because of prior Northern intervention (the Civil War)?

[Nazi Flower Power]

America's agricultural base is mostly in Union states, specifically the Midwest and California.

This is true today, but most cash crops during the 19th century were grown in the American South. Cotton and tobacco were huge sources of income for the 19th century United States, and the US, iirc, produced over 70% of the world's cotton. It is no exaggeration to say that, in the CSA, "cotton was king". Without the southern states, the US would lose a huge source of income.

That's cash crops. The food crops, which are a lot harder to do without, were in the Midwest. That is why during the Civil War, it was always the Union that was feeding its people decently and the Confederacy that had severe food shortages and supply problems.

That's just your fantasy. You have no way to know that all that would actually happen, and TBH, some of it doesn't sound very likely.

Yeah, I'll admit that this is my most optimistic scenario. If the South seceded, the US wouldn't be powerful enough to have the freedom to make such severe foreign policy mistakes (entrance into World War I), but this doesn't mean that other nations would act the way I've predicted... I'm sure Britain and Germany would have had their own screw-ups, so yes, my fantasy probably would not have occurred.

I still think that:
1) US intervention into the first world war was a catastrophic mistake that enabled some of the worst tragedies of the 20th century (Nazi Germany, communist Russia and China)
2) That intervention would not have been possible if the US was so weakened by the successful secession of the CSA.

Other crises and errors that I have not imagined would probably have taken place in this scenario - I have just envisioned the best possible scenario without the US errors. Nonetheless, I think avoiding this error would have been a great opportunity.

I'm not convinced that the Union or Confederacy wouldn't intervene in WWI, or that Britain and France wouldn't eventually just beat Germany on their own and impose a treaty similar to Versailles.

[Laerod]

The North was Abolitionist long before industrialization. You're completely bungling the causality, if there even was one to begin with.

Why? The South was founded on the principle of racist slavery and even before that abolitionists were routinely killed or driven out of business. Support for slavery was a thing regardless of how much economic or moral sense it made. It even had a church that split from its predecessor solely because some people refused to accept their interpretation that slavery was ordained by God (see Southern Baptism).

The South was utterly different from all the examples where slavery ended, so stop abusing Brazil as an example of what would have happened.

The south wasn't founded on the principle of slavery,

Don't lie. Virtually every declaration of the causes of secession makes it clear that slavery and the threat of the North making it illegal is why the South rebelled.

when Lincoln never made slavery the main goal of the war, as he really wanted to preserve the Union. In the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of 1865, Lincoln stated that the point of emancipation was to get more slaves to join the Union, and that if the Confederacy rejoined the Union, they could've blocked the 13th Amendment and maintained slavery, and if 11 southern states did rejoin, it would be very easy for the south to end abolition.

This is relevant only to Lincoln's goals and motivation. No one but you is accusing the South of being intelligent enough not to turn down opportunities to maintain slavery.

With mechanization, the efficiency of one man largely improves. With mechanization, one person can do the work of what once needed a dozen people. This would effectively phase out slaves, which would have costed, in modern terms tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars (usually those who can do the most work would've costed a few hundred thousand dollars in today's terms). Instead, hiring one for a fraction of the cost of hiring a slave and not paying for the food, water, clothing and shelter of the slave would be far more profitable and efficient, which would've been the main reason for the abolition of slavery.

Southerners, much like regular people, were not rational economic actors. Austrian economics don't apply to the real world.

[Nazi Flower Power]

Slavery would certainly have ended, but the timeframe is questionable: it is possible that the practice would have continued for several decades longer. Nonetheless, I have confidence that:

(a) Economic and social pressures would have ensured the eventual end (downward prices of cotton production, inefficiency of slavery, slave revolts, poor white farmer rebellions, etc.)

(b) Liberal social ideals would continue their monotonous, unending march forward

Such that the southern gentry elite would eventually need or decide to abolish the 'peculiar institution'.

Now, larger questions:
1) How would civil rights have faired in Southern America without Union intervention?
2) What would geopolitics look like?

As per 1, we see a decidedly grimmer South: without Northern intervention, oppression of blacks occurs not only more heavily, but also more directly, as the state is less impeded by constitutional restrictions in its ability to enforce legislated racial oppression. Social progress would continue as it has historically, but at a far slower pace.

Yet, as per 2, I think we see an unarguably better word: one that perhaps even warrants the sacrifice of increased racial bigotry. Without the Confederate States, the Union finds itself in a weaker position than it has historically been: deprived of its agricultural base and challenged with three powerful competitors (Britain to the north, Mexico to the southwest, and CSA to the south). The Union is no longer able to assert its regional hegemony as aggressively as it has historically done, so it cannot intervene globally to the same extent that the American empire is used to. This means no Spanish-American war... more importantly, no (decisive) American intervention in World War I, meaning no German surrender/desperate strategy, meaning no collapse of the Russian Empire/Bolshevik Revolution, meaning no Treaty of Versailles, meaning no Nazi Germany, no Soviet Union, no Maoist China. The British and French colonial Empires do not collapse, Germany comes to dominate Central Europe in an economic union, and Eurasia is united in free trade. North America is tenser than was historically the case, but millions of lives have been spared holocausts, world wars, and communist revolutions. The atom bomb was not invented, and a Congress of Vienna reasserts the conducts and norms of a more civilized era. The Atlantic powers lead the way in forwarding a bold, united vision of a liberal future, and science, progress, and cosmopolitanism rule the day.

In other words, all the calamitous, unintended failures of US foreign policy do not come to be, and balance and order are maintained in Europe, as they had been for a century before.

Isn't it possible that a more gradual abolition of slavery would result in less oppression of blacks? If the south won, the people would be happier, and wouldn't need to find a scapegoat for the suffering, which in the case of the south, were blacks, resulting in the lynch mobs and other forms of discrimination. Slower and more gradualistic abolition throughout the later decades of the 19th Century and perhaps some level of compensation for the manumission of slaves would've made the people happier with black people being freed, and they wouldn't go around oppressing blacks and lynching them.

On the civil rights issue, I think what Aug suggested is more likely.

[Laerod]

They would love profit regardless of how economically rational they are, ...

This is what your argument is based on and without it it falls apart. Historical evidence that this is an entirely delusional premise:

Segregation - Denying equal economic opportunities to blacks and turning away a substantial consumer base makes no economic sense. It persisting until Federal authorities brought it down shows that, at the very least, Southerners were less interested in making money than they were in disenfranchising blacks.

Tulsa Race Riot - Destroying a prosperous neighborhood and ruining the businesses there simply because they were run by blacks (because they couldn't do business anywhere else) makes no economic sense, yet not only did it happen, but local and state authorities that directly benefitted from the taxes paid by the people running the businesses, their employees, and their customers, actively participated.

Whether slavery made any sort of economic sense is irrelevant. Using toilet paper rather than a bidet makes no economic sense, but see if anyone cares.

[Nazis in Space]

No slavery is a profitable wealth creating institution where slaves can be owned by companies and forced to work in industry, it's not simply an agrarian thing.

Profitable...where? The Third Reich? It's rarely been used. Productivity tends to decrease when you working base has nothing to lose by slowing work and preventing large scale operations. You'd likely see mass waves of strikes and revolts, especially when the workers are in close proximity and influenced by Marxist demagogues.

Uh. Using millions of slaves to maintain arms manufacturing while everyone else was at the front was the reason the third reich didn't collapse a year or two earlier than it did historically. The war effort would've been impossible without enslaving several million slavs and ferrying them to Germany to produce guns and ammo. This does, incidentally, also show that slavery doesn't need to be restricted to agricultural work. Industrialised slavery works just fine. Not every factory worker is an engineer, after all.

The Third Reich, much like modern sweat shops, is a pretty good example of slavery working as intended.

Slavery does have economic problems - recessions in particular are painful, since you can't just random fire slaves. You can free them, of course, but the loss of capital is well into the realm of 'OUCH! I'M RUINED!' -, but as long as the owners have enough resources to get over a recession while maintaining their slaves... Perfectly profitable. And I imagine that a country quite literally founded on the principle of slavery, a country that has fought a war to maintain slavery, would be perfectly willing to provide subsidies for slave owners to get them over a recession, rather than allowing for a massive loss of capital, destroying the very institution they fought and died for, and ultimately destroying its powerbase.

Let us also not forget that although they officially illegalised slavery, the colonial powers happily continued to use slavery in all but name well into the 20th century, devastation large strips of Africa, the South Pacific, and South-East Asia with the practice. Why? Because it was effective.

Sure, the country will tend to be export-oriented, since slavery doesn't exactly lend itself to building a large internal consumer base, but that's about it. And we have countries IRL who function like that, with and without slavery.

The abolition of slavery is by no means an economic inevitability. Which is, of course, why there are, in fact, some twenty to thirty million slaves in existence right now.

[Nazi Flower Power]

Isn't it possible that a more gradual abolition of slavery would result in less oppression of blacks? If the south won, the people would be happier, and wouldn't need to find a scapegoat for the suffering, which in the case of the south, were blacks, resulting in the lynch mobs and other forms of discrimination. Slower and more gradualistic abolition throughout the later decades of the 19th Century and perhaps some level of compensation for the manumission of slaves would've made the people happier with black people being freed, and they wouldn't go around oppressing blacks and lynching them.

I could see this: a lot of racial tension was the product of the humiliation of the south at northern hands and the catastrophic poverty brought about by Union plunder of the south (the destruction of Georgia, especially Atlanta, for example). So it's possible that a South that was not culturally shattered by a military defeat and was not economically ravaged by war would also not be so racially divided as the South historically was. I guess it's a sort of chicken-and-egg question: Northern intervention attempted to address racial tensions in the south, but were those racial tensions only so severe because of prior Northern intervention (the Civil War)?

The Civil War would never have happened in the first place if the racial divisions weren't already there.

[Republic of Coldwater]

The south wasn't founded on the principle of slavery,

Don't lie. Virtually every declaration of the causes of secession makes it clear that slavery and the threat of the North making it illegal is why the South rebelled.

when Lincoln never made slavery the main goal of the war, as he really wanted to preserve the Union. In the Hampton Roads Peace Conference of 1865, Lincoln stated that the point of emancipation was to get more slaves to join the Union, and that if the Confederacy rejoined the Union, they could've blocked the 13th Amendment and maintained slavery, and if 11 southern states did rejoin, it would be very easy for the south to end abolition.

This is relevant only to Lincoln's goals and motivation. No one but you is accusing the South of being intelligent enough not to turn down opportunities to maintain slavery.

With mechanization, the efficiency of one man largely improves. With mechanization, one person can do the work of what once needed a dozen people. This would effectively phase out slaves, which would have costed, in modern terms tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars (usually those who can do the most work would've costed a few hundred thousand dollars in today's terms). Instead, hiring one for a fraction of the cost of hiring a slave and not paying for the food, water, clothing and shelter of the slave would be far more profitable and efficient, which would've been the main reason for the abolition of slavery.

Southerners, much like regular people, were not rational economic actors. Austrian economics don't apply to the real world.

Then explain why West Virginia counter seceded, and why Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware all didn't secede despite having slaves and slavery.

The south mainly fought for their independence and to oppose northern tariffs. The problem was that they begun to industrialize, but the north instilled high tariffs, which resulted in a slower pace of industrialization as the south had to buy machinery from both the north and Europe. This resulted in a weaker economy, and the main reason behind the war. Jefferson Davis actually adopted a black child (look up Jim Limber) and treated him equal to his other white children, and people like Lysander Spooner supported the CSA despite being an abolitionist.

Slavery was also dying by the time the war had begun. Supply has been at an all-time low, and only the wealthiest of the wealthiest can afford slaves. Most of the people in the south didn't own slaves and couldn't ever own slaves, yet 900,000 largely working or middle class citizens, those who cannot afford slaves in their lifetime still join the Confederate Army regardless.

I don't want to divert this thread into "What the Confederacy fought for" so TG me on that issue if you want to further debate this issue.

So by your logic, companies wouldn't have installed the conveyor belt on their factories, or upgraded to computers, or do anything new. Most places abolished slavery when it has become simply inefficient and unprofitable, and it would be the same for the CSA. There would be other nations who would pressure and urge the CSA to do so, and many leaders and generals in the CSA aren't very fond of slavery, and when the time came for abolition, the leaders, who would have quite some influence could help the abolition.

[Augarundus]

That's cash crops. The food crops, which are a lot harder to do without, were in the Midwest. That is why during the Civil War, it was always the Union that was feeding its people decently and the Confederacy that had severe food shortages and supply problems.

True, the north is still in a more geographically favorable position than the South. I think that's part of the reason why we won the Civil War: land that's more fertile/better suited to support hardy grains that can sustain large populations, meaning the North could more quickly and deeply develop large populations. Doesn't change the fact that cash crops were incredibly profitable, and losing out on that revenue would have badly hindered the Union's global position.

I'm not convinced that the Union or Confederacy wouldn't intervene in WWI, or that Britain and France wouldn't eventually just beat Germany on their own and impose a treaty similar to Versailles.

I doubt that the USA and CSA would have intervened on the same side: the Zimmerman telegraph revealed that Germany already had an interest in turning Mexico against the US, and I believe it would have had an easier job turning the two fractured nations against one another in the case of a Unionist intervention on behalf of the Atlantic powers. In any case, I doubt that any intervention could have been decisive, because the US would not have been the superpower is was historically if the CSA had seceded successfully.

It seems to me that the presence of the US was a decisive factor in the outcome of the war: absent the US, France and the UK had been ground to economic dust. Germany was not far ahead in terms of national stability, but it was American industrial strength backing British and French bayonets that proved which side had the greater will to last longer in the war. Absent that will, Germany would not have been at such a strategic disadvantage (tactically speaking, its offensive was proceeding excellently: German troops were but a few kilometers from Paris, hence the "stabbed in the back" legend), so I think that a negotiated status quo ante bellum would have been most likely.

[Augarundus]

The Civil War would never have happened in the first place if the racial divisions weren't already there.

Factually wrong. The Civil War was fought for a litany of reasons, many of which had nothing to do with race/slavery.

[Republic of Coldwater]

Profitable...where? The Third Reich? It's rarely been used. Productivity tends to decrease when you working base has nothing to lose by slowing work and preventing large scale operations. You'd likely see mass waves of strikes and revolts, especially when the workers are in close proximity and influenced by Marxist demagogues.

Uh. Using millions of slaves to maintain arms manufacturing while everyone else was at the front was the reason the third reich didn't collapse a year or two earlier than it did historically. The war effort would've been impossible without enslaving several million slavs and ferrying them to Germany to produce guns and ammo. This does, incidentally, also show that slavery doesn't need to be restricted to agricultural work. Industrialised slavery works just fine. Not every factory worker is an engineer, after all.

The Third Reich, much like modern sweat shops, is a pretty good example of slavery working as intended.

Slavery does have economic problems - recessions in particular are painful, since you can't just random fire slaves. You can free them, of course, but the loss of capital is well into the realm of 'OUCH! I'M RUINED!' -, but as long as the owners have enough resources to get over a recession while maintaining their slaves... Perfectly profitable. And I imagine that a country quite literally founded on the principle of slavery, a country that has fought a war to maintain slavery, would be perfectly willing to provide subsidies for slave owners to get them over a recession, rather than allowing for a massive loss of capital, destroying the very institution they fought and died for, and ultimately destroying its powerbase.

Let us also not forget that although they officially illegalised slavery, the colonial powers happily continued to use slavery in all but name well into the 20th century, devastation large strips of Africa, the South Pacific, and South-East Asia with the practice. Why? Because it was effective.

Sure, the country will tend to be export-oriented, since slavery doesn't exactly lend itself to building a large internal consumer base, but that's about it. And we have countries IRL who function like that, with and without slavery.

The abolition of slavery is by no means an economic inevitability. Which is, of course, why there are, in fact, some twenty to thirty million slaves in existence right now.

Of course slavery still exists today, in the backwater of places where it is still the most efficient kind of labor, and it would exist in the CSA just like how it exists in the USA Today despite it being banned by the law.

The legal abolition of slavery would be an economic inevitability for a progressively industrialization nation like the CSA. Even agrarian Brazil abolished slavery, and it was far more agrarian than the CSA, while in the CSA the costs of slaves were drastically increasing, and when mechanization comes, you don't need so many workers, and by that time you would need to still clothe, feed and shelter the slaves, which is pretty costly, when you can hire someone who you would have to pay for quite some time for the cost to equal the cost of purchasing a single slave. You would only have to pay the person's wages.

[Nazis in Space]

Tahar Joblis has, incidentally, raised a good point.

Eugenics were quite popular throughout the latter half of the 19th, and first half of the 20th century. If the South decides to destroy a healthy chunk of its economic capital by way of freeing the slaves (Unlikely, IMO, seeing as - as Trotzkylvania has noted -, breeding slaves was a profitable endeavour) before the 1950s at the earliest, large-scale sterilisation (Or flat-out industrialised murder) to deal with a population of undesirables is likely inevitable.

There is historical precedent. The entire reason the Middle East doesn't have a sizable black minority, if not an outright majority, is that the Arabs started to castrate their slaves after a particularly nasty revolt that almost toppled them. And I don't think I need to point out the historical precedent for industrialised murder.

After the 1950s, this may become increasingly difficult due to international pressure, though. This being said, Peru still pulled it off with 400000 indigenous women in the 1990s, so hey.

So, yeah.

Abolition of slavery in a victorious south? During the heyday of the Eugenics movement? In a staggeringly racist society?

We're talking genocide here. Inevitable genocide.

[Nazis in Space]

The Civil War would never have happened in the first place if the racial divisions weren't already there.

Factually wrong. The Civil War was fought for a litany of reasons, many of which had nothing to do with race/slavery.

Well, the Civil War was indeed not fought due to slavery.

It was fought because the South actively attacked the North, neutral States, and States unwilling to secede.

Secession on the other hand, well... I'm afraid that 'It wasn't for slavery, I swear!' isn't a very good argument when - for example - Texas reasoning on the matter is all about slaves and how much they love slavery.

[Nazis in Space]

Uh. Using millions of slaves to maintain arms manufacturing while everyone else was at the front was the reason the third reich didn't collapse a year or two earlier than it did historically. The war effort would've been impossible without enslaving several million slavs and ferrying them to Germany to produce guns and ammo. This does, incidentally, also show that slavery doesn't need to be restricted to agricultural work. Industrialised slavery works just fine. Not every factory worker is an engineer, after all.

The Third Reich, much like modern sweat shops, is a pretty good example of slavery working as intended.

Slavery does have economic problems - recessions in particular are painful, since you can't just random fire slaves. You can free them, of course, but the loss of capital is well into the realm of 'OUCH! I'M RUINED!' -, but as long as the owners have enough resources to get over a recession while maintaining their slaves... Perfectly profitable. And I imagine that a country quite literally founded on the principle of slavery, a country that has fought a war to maintain slavery, would be perfectly willing to provide subsidies for slave owners to get them over a recession, rather than allowing for a massive loss of capital, destroying the very institution they fought and died for, and ultimately destroying its powerbase.

Let us also not forget that although they officially illegalised slavery, the colonial powers happily continued to use slavery in all but name well into the 20th century, devastation large strips of Africa, the South Pacific, and South-East Asia with the practice. Why? Because it was effective.

Sure, the country will tend to be export-oriented, since slavery doesn't exactly lend itself to building a large internal consumer base, but that's about it. And we have countries IRL who function like that, with and without slavery.

The abolition of slavery is by no means an economic inevitability. Which is, of course, why there are, in fact, some twenty to thirty million slaves in existence right now.

Of course slavery still exists today, in the backwater of places where it is still the most efficient kind of labor, and it would exist in the CSA just like how it exists in the USA Today despite it being banned by the law.

The legal abolition of slavery would be an economic inevitability for a progressively industrialization nation like the CSA. Even agrarian Brazil abolished slavery, and it was far more agrarian than the CSA, while in the CSA the costs of slaves were drastically increasing, and when mechanization comes, you don't need so many workers, and by that time you would need to still clothe, feed and shelter the slaves, which is pretty costly, when you can hire someone who you would have to pay for quite some time for the cost to equal the cost of purchasing a single slave. You would only have to pay the person's wages.

I'm pretty sure I already covered how slaves can be perfectly efficient industrial workers.

Also, industrialising South?

lol

It didn't industrialise very well historically, despite lots of available labour via recently freed slaves. That a victorious South would industrialise faster is... A hilarious, but staggeringly unfeasible suggestion.

And the South doesn't need to industrialise. It has oil. Loads of oil. By the time agriculture alone doesn't hold it up anymore, oil discoveries can easily take its place.

A victorious South' future isn't industrialisation. It's Saudi-Arabia. An oil-funded aristocracy living off loads of slaves (Slaves in all but name, if need be), with a healthy dose of theocratic justification for its evils.

[Laerod]

Don't lie. Virtually every declaration of the causes of secession makes it clear that slavery and the threat of the North making it illegal is why the South rebelled.

This is relevant only to Lincoln's goals and motivation. No one but you is accusing the South of being intelligent enough not to turn down opportunities to maintain slavery.

Southerners, much like regular people, were not rational economic actors. Austrian economics don't apply to the real world.

Then explain why West Virginia counter seceded, and why Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware all didn't secede despite having slaves and slavery.

If this is meant as a counter argument, it's pretty pathetic. Consider this: I'm arguing the South rebelled over slavery. West Virginians, Missourans, Kentuckyans, Marylanders, Delawarishmen (what is the demonym for Delaware?), Northern Louisianans, and East Tennesseeans preferring to stay with the Union has no meaningful impact on slavery being the decisive reason for the South to secede.

The south mainly fought for their independence and to oppose northern tariffs.

A lie. Tariffs are virtually unmentioned as a reason for secession when secession happened, primarily because the issue had been resolved in the South's favor years earlier.

The problem was that they begun to industrialize, but the north instilled high tariffs, which resulted in a slower pace of industrialization as the south had to buy machinery from both the north and Europe. This resulted in a weaker economy, and the main reason behind the war.

A lie. There were no high tariffs at the time.

Jefferson Davis actually adopted a black child (look up Jim Limber) and treated him equal to his other white children, and people like Lysander Spooner supported the CSA despite being an abolitionist.

So what? Davis engaging in a single act of decency is about as meaningful as when Hermann Göring helped a Jewish couple flee Nazi Germany. And Lysander Spooner's opinion on the legality of secession is largely irrelevant.

Slavery was also dying by the time the war had begun. Supply has been at an all-time low, and only the wealthiest of the wealthiest can afford slaves. Most of the people in the south didn't own slaves and couldn't ever own slaves, yet 900,000 largely working or middle class citizens, those who cannot afford slaves in their lifetime still join the Confederate Army regardless.

And it was the wealthiest of the wealthy that called the shots on secession.

I don't want to divert this thread into "What the Confederacy fought for" so TG me on that issue if you want to further debate this issue.

Oh, fuck no. I've got no patience for having my inbox filled with bullshit about how someone can't be bothered to read the declarations of reasons for secession or that pretends they're somehow less relevant than post-war excuses written by the losers.

So by your logic, companies wouldn't have installed the conveyor belt on their factories, or upgraded to computers, or do anything new.

And seeing as "companies haven't", I'm pretty spot on with my contention. And that's not even considering that a comparable scenario would be where installing conveyor belts is at least implicitely unconstitutional and not using conveyor belts was a major way of life. Also, people that suggested using conveyer belts would occasionally end up getting murdered for suggesting it.

Most places abolished slavery when it has become simply inefficient and unprofitable, and it would be the same for the CSA. There would be other nations who would pressure and urge the CSA to do so, and many leaders and generals in the CSA aren't very fond of slavery, and when the time came for abolition, the leaders, who would have quite some influence could help the abolition.

Delusion and speculation.

[Laerod]

The Civil War would never have happened in the first place if the racial divisions weren't already there.

Factually wrong. The Civil War was fought for a litany of reasons, many of which had nothing to do with race/slavery.

Bullshit. The South seceded explicitely over slavery. We have this black on white several times over, and then supported many times over in the press. There is one reason why the Civil War happened: The South rebelled because they felt it was the only way to ensure slavery persisted and the North wasn't willing to let them go.

[Augarundus]

Well, the Civil War was indeed not fought due to slavery.

It was fought because the South actively attacked the North, neutral States, and States unwilling to secede.

Secession on the other hand, well... I'm afraid that 'It wasn't for slavery, I swear!' isn't a very good argument when - for example - Texas reasoning on the matter is all about slaves and how much they love slavery.

I didn't say that states did not secede to protect the institution of slavery. I said that there were many reasons for secession - that amongst these reasons was the protection of slavery, but that there were also other reasons for secession. This is not my being an apologist for secession, but an accurate assessment of historical fact. It is now an accepted fact amongst mainstream historical scholars that the causes of the Civil War were complex. My contention is not that the South's position was morally justified or that slavery played no role in the decision to secede (in fact, it played a significant role, as far as I - a non-expert- can tell), but that numerous issues unrelated to slavery also played a role in the decision to secede. For example, the structural difference in Northern and Southern economies (a difference that, yes, manifested itself in slavery, but was even more fundamental than that) that caused necessary conflicts between Northern and Southern political interests. The conflict between the Protectionist North (which sought to subsidize its industrial development through tariffs) and the Free Trade South (which was dependent upon imports for most consumer and industrial goods, as its economy was primarily agricultural) is now recognized as a decisive factor contributing to the Civil War.

[Nazis in Space]

Well, the Civil War was indeed not fought due to slavery.

It was fought because the South actively attacked the North, neutral States, and States unwilling to secede.

Secession on the other hand, well... I'm afraid that 'It wasn't for slavery, I swear!' isn't a very good argument when - for example - Texas reasoning on the matter is all about slaves and how much they love slavery.

I didn't say that states did not secede to protect the institution of slavery. I said that there were many reasons for secession - that amongst these reasons was the protection of slavery, but that there were also other reasons for secession. This is not my being an apologist for secession, but an accurate assessment of historical fact. It is now an accepted fact amongst mainstream historical scholars that the causes of the Civil War were complex. My contention is not that the South's position was morally justified or that slavery played no role in the decision to secede (in fact, it played a significant role, as far as I - a non-expert- can tell), but that numerous issues unrelated to slavery also played a role in the decision to secede. For example, the structural difference in Northern and Southern economies (a difference that, yes, manifested itself in slavery, but was even more fundamental than that) that caused necessary conflicts between Northern and Southern political interests. The conflict between the Protectionist North (which sought to subsidize its industrial development through tariffs) and the Free Trade South (which was dependent upon imports for most consumer and industrial goods, as its economy was primarily agricultural) is now recognized as a decisive factor contributing to the Civil War.

And all of that is bullshit because as the linked document shows, it's harping about slavery and slavery and... Some more about slavery.

The one other thing it does - claiming that the North is the aggressor - is, of course, total bullshit, because it was the South that fired the first shots and invaded the North as well as neutral states. Repeatedly. It's the American equivalent of Gleiwitz.

[Xerusia]

Economy would've imploded, poverty and several condemnations from other countries.

[Laerod]

Well, the Civil War was indeed not fought due to slavery.

It was fought because the South actively attacked the North, neutral States, and States unwilling to secede.

Secession on the other hand, well... I'm afraid that 'It wasn't for slavery, I swear!' isn't a very good argument when - for example - Texas reasoning on the matter is all about slaves and how much they love slavery.

I didn't say that states did not secede to protect the institution of slavery. I said that there were many reasons for secession - that amongst these reasons was the protection of slavery, but that there were also other reasons for secession.

The pre-war Secessionists beg to differ. Slavery is the keyword in virtually all the declarations of the reasons of secession. It isn't "one of many" reasons, it's the reason. Pretty much everything else can be traced back precisely to that issue.

This is not my being an apologist for secession, but an accurate assessment of historical fact. It is now an accepted fact amongst mainstream historical scholars that the causes of the Civil War were complex.

It is not.

My contention is not that the South's position was morally justified or that slavery played no role in the decision to secede (in fact, it played a significant role, as far as I - a non-expert- can tell), but that numerous issues unrelated to slavery also played a role in the decision to secede. For example, the structural difference in Northern and Southern economies (a difference that, yes, manifested itself in slavery, but was even more fundamental than that) that caused necessary conflicts between Northern and Southern political interests. The conflict between the Protectionist North (which sought to subsidize its industrial development through tariffs) and the Free Trade South (which was dependent upon imports for most consumer and industrial goods, as its economy was primarily agricultural) is now recognized as a decisive factor contributing to the Civil War.

Neither of those are "unrelated" to slavery. Mind you, neither of those get anywhere near the kind of mention in the declarations either as slavery does, if they get mentioned at all. In fact the whole tariffs thing even got resolved in the South's favor in the years prior.

[Augarundus]

And all of that is bullshit because as the linked document shows, it's harping about slavery and slavery and... Some more about slavery.

The one other thing it does - claiming that the North is the aggressor - is, of course, total bullshit, because it was the South that fired the first shots and invaded the North as well as neutral states. Repeatedly. It's the American equivalent of Gleiwitz.

The linked document is simply Texas's stated reasons for secession. IIRC, relatively few Southern states bothered to list explicitly the reasons for secession. Those that did did include slavery amongst those reasons, but it's simply bad historical scholarship to conclude that slavery was the singularly decisive reason for secession and that nothing else mattered.

If you'd bothered to read my post, you would see that I never claimed slavery was not amongst the reasons for secession. I claimed that there were other reasons for secession alongside slavery, and these reasons played a strong role in motivating the south's decision to secede.

John C. Calhoun said: "the North has adopted a system of revenue and disbursements, in which an undue proportion of the burden of taxation has been imposed on the South, and an undue proportion appropriated to the North, and for the monopolization of Northern industry."

More historical analysis (albeit from Murray Rothbard, but peer-reviewed, published, and cited, nonetheless): "Lincoln’s major focus was on raising taxes, in particular raising and enforcing the tariff. His convention victory was particularly made possible by support from the Pennsylvania delegation. Pennsylvania had long been the home and the political focus of the nation’s iron and steel industry" (note that Lincoln was not an abolitionist, and actually stated in the early stages of the Civil War that he would be comfortable permitting slavery throughout the South if that would save the Union) "the first act of the Lincoln administration was to pass the Morrill protective tariff act, doubling existing tariff rates, and creating the highest tariff rates in American history. [...] In his First Inaugural, Lincoln was conciliatory about maintaining slavery; what he was hard-line about toward the South was insistence on collecting all the customs tariffs in that region. As Lincoln put it, the federal government would "collect the duties and imposts, but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against . . . people anywhere." The significance of the federal forts is that they provided the soldiers to enforce the customs tariffs; thus, Fort Sumter was at the entrance to Charleston Harbor, the major port, apart from New Orleans, in the entire South. The federal troops at Sumter were needed to enforce the tariffs that were supposed to be levied at Charleston Harbor."

This is undeniably true: Lincoln's primary concern was the preservation of the Union, one of the South's greatest grievances with the North (and one that was long-standing and had manifested itself in early secessionist movements during the Jackson administration) was over the issue of tariffs, and Fort Sumter was a military base from which the Union could threaten South Carolina in order to impose its tax policies on the state.

This is not a claim that the North's imposition of taxation was unjustified, that the South's secession - conversely - was justified, or that slavery was not also an important motivator for secession. Only that other issues played significant roles in the decision as well.

If you aren't going to read or respond to my argument, please read an introductory textbook on American history. Most primary schools - and the preponderance of academia- now teach the version of history that I am presenting above: that history is more complex that your morality play narrative lets on.

[Augarundus]

The pre-war Secessionists beg to differ. Slavery is the keyword in virtually all the declarations of the reasons of secession. It isn't "one of many" reasons, it's the reason. Pretty much everything else can be traced back precisely to that issue.

Again, this is completely non-responsive. I didn't say that slavery wasn't a key motivator for Southern secession. I didn't even deny that it was the most significant motivator. I just claimed that secession was also motivated by other factors as well.

The belief that the Civil War's origins were not monocausal is completely compatible with the belief that slavery played a decisive role in the decision to secede. Dr. Magness, Academic Director of the Institute for Humane Studies, writes that "The tariff thesis is contentious because it is often interpreted as an attempt to displace the primacy of slavery as the underlying instigator of events in Civil War causality [...] Yet as we will see, the tariff issue cannot be completely discounted from the discussion of Civil War causality. [...] To state that tariffs were not an issue in 1860 is itself “flatly wrong,""

He notes that "We do know for certain, contrary to the claims in Loewen’s article, that the secessionists did contemplate and debate the tariff issue at length. Tariffs almost always came up as a secondary consideration to slavery.[...] When mentioned it was usually treated as a parallel grievance against the North. On December 25, 1860 the South Carolina secession convention issued an invitation to the legislatures of the other southern states, citing as its rationale “the consolidation of the North to rule the South, by the tariff and slavery issues.” [...] When weighed against the sum of other evidence, it is difficult to maintain that the tariff was the lone, central issue of the secession crisis by any measure, but at least in the modern era most historians who follow the tariff thesis do not do this. It is therefore something of a strawman to expunge all discussion of the tariff on account of its later connection to “Lost Cause” historiography, and some historians who attack the tariff thesis are guilty of this tendency. Tariff politics at any time in history are notoriously complex, and analysis of them requires both political knowledge and an understanding of their economic effects."

Neither of those are "unrelated" to slavery. Mind you, neither of those get anywhere near the kind of mention in the declarations either as slavery does, if they get mentioned at all. In fact the whole tariffs thing even got resolved in the South's favor in the years prior.

As above, the belief that tariffs were not on the mind of southerners is patently false. And most of the controversy was over the Morrill Tariff, which was not "resolved in the years prior", having passed in 1861.

[SaintB]

The Confederacy would have collapsed even if it had won independence, the damage done in manpower, money, and infrastructure was unrecoverable by them. If if had managed to stay afloat it would be like Mexico with some highly developed areas but mostly agrarian with extreme high poverty rates and I'm pretty sure that a least a few states would have crawled back to the USA.

[The Cobalt Sky]

I imagine it would end up like South Africa. The big question, what would World War 1 and World War 2 be like if the CSA existed? Would the CSA join the triple Entente and the USA join the triple alliance?

I wonder if it would happen as a series of several wars instead of just WW1 and then WW2. If you took the idea of a unified America out of the mix, how might European countries deal with each other? I have no idea.

[Myrensis]

Then explain why West Virginia counter seceded, and why Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware all didn't secede despite having slaves and slavery.

They decided slavery wasn't worth rebellion and war over? I'm not really sure how you think this is some sort of compelling argument.

The south mainly fought for their independence and to oppose northern tariffs. The problem was that they begun to industrialize, but the north instilled high tariffs, which resulted in a slower pace of industrialization as the south had to buy machinery from both the north and Europe. This resulted in a weaker economy, and the main reason behind the war.

So why the repeated references, both personally and in secession documents, to the threat to the God ordained system of slavery? It's amusing to me that the Southerners at the time were completely unabashed about ardently defending slavery and and condemning the North's attempts to interfere with the divinely ordained institution, and yet their modern apologists continue to insist that it was totally just a minor side issue, and the real reasons for the War were apparently just so obvious that they never felt the need to mention them.

Jefferson Davis actually adopted a black child (look up Jim Limber) and treated him equal to his other white children, and people like Lysander Spooner supported the CSA despite being an abolitionist.

Also irrelevant. It's nice that that Davis treated one little black boy nicely even as he headed a government dedicated to the cause of keeping millions more in chattel slavery, but doesn't change anything. Nor does Spooner have any bearing on it, since it had nothing to do with support of the Confederacy as an institution, but simply with his belief that State's had the right to secede for whatever reason. Amusingly he considered this a natural extension of the same reason why slavery should be abolished, so his views were unpopular in both the North and the South.

Slavery was also dying by the time the war had begun. Supply has been at an all-time low, and only the wealthiest of the wealthiest can afford slaves. Most of the people in the south didn't own slaves and couldn't ever own slaves, yet 900,000 largely working or middle class citizens, those who cannot afford slaves in their lifetime still join the Confederate Army regardless.

Yes, because as we all know, every war in history has been fought solely by those with a vested personal interest in its outcome. Certainly nobody has ever been manipulated or conscripted into fighting for someone else's cause.