What if the South was allowed to secede peacefully?
- Thread starter johnreiter
- Start date
Of course not! they would use whisky!
Jokes aside - americans could indeed not capture any british port in Canada, i only stated fact that such tactic would be not impossible for countries with enough fanatics,comissars,or good drugs.
Which mean no USA.Snif,snif.
Economically, culturalyas well as constitutionally the Souths long term growth will be hampered.
First slavery isn't long for this world and while that is a good thing morally, for an independent Southern State founded by a slave holding elite and who's very constitution bars abolition even on the state level of governance it definitely is not.
Diplomatic pressure and isolation will ramp up to put an end to the institution the closer to 1900 it gets as Europe, primarily Britain fosters cheaper cotton production in their colonies, even then the Boll Weevil will arrive in the 1890's and that will screw over King Cotton more.
The fact is however that I think it's highly likely that between independence and 1910 that a Civil Conflict (not necessarily a war) will erupt on the issue with slave owners on one side and a more capitalist based industrialist on the other who are tired with harsh foreign duties being placed on the CSA for its upholding of the institution.
It also stands to reason that the U.S. would try to take some form of advantage in the situation.
On the race front I imagine it will be starkly familiar in some ways, starkly different in others. The African American population will most likely be far smaller, migration to the North for escaped slaves will be harder and for those that escape once they are north of the Ohio returning to the CSA is unlikely even if they want to emigrate back even if slavery dies, the population their will slowly shrink, even later when the Great Migration happened in OTL is unlikely to happen due to borders making a lack of free mobility, resulting in the African American population not growing as starkly as it did either.
First slavery isn't long for this world and while that is a good thing morally, for an independent Southern State founded by a slave holding elite and who's very constitution bars abolition even on the state level of governance it definitely is not.
Diplomatic pressure and isolation will ramp up to put an end to the institution the closer to 1900 it gets as Europe, primarily Britain fosters cheaper cotton production in their colonies, even then the Boll Weevil will arrive in the 1890's and that will screw over King Cotton more.
The fact is however that I think it's highly likely that between independence and 1910 that a Civil Conflict (not necessarily a war) will erupt on the issue with slave owners on one side and a more capitalist based industrialist on the other who are tired with harsh foreign duties being placed on the CSA for its upholding of the institution.
It also stands to reason that the U.S. would try to take some form of advantage in the situation.
On the race front I imagine it will be starkly familiar in some ways, starkly different in others. The African American population will most likely be far smaller, migration to the North for escaped slaves will be harder and for those that escape once they are north of the Ohio returning to the CSA is unlikely even if they want to emigrate back even if slavery dies, the population their will slowly shrink, even later when the Great Migration happened in OTL is unlikely to happen due to borders making a lack of free mobility, resulting in the African American population not growing as starkly as it did either.
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While I generally agree with this, I don't think you'd see the remaining slave-owning border states secede when failing to get that amendment, especially not Virginia, Tennessee, and Maryland. Virginia's economy had long already started to become mixed, with early industrialization in Richmond. Further plantation slavery in the State was becoming less and less viable, as the soils there for cotton has long since depleted and tobacco likewise had drained it. The primary tie Virginia had to the slavery system of the South was... well... in BREEDING slaves, and that was something that only the most wealthy and largest slaveholders were really involved in. Further, the US would have strong incentives to try and keep Virginia in the USA, as it holds the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and thus the rivers upstream, and while I could see them not adopting a "keep slavery in perpetuity" arrangement, I COULD see them adopting a gradual, compensated emancipation arrangement that would blunt the majority of the sting of abolishing slavery.
You also have to remember that Virginia's identity is more tied to the US' than it is to being part of "The South". The numerous Virginia founders and framers give it a strong cultural tie to the US and wanting to see it succeed and be part of that. In fact, one of the things that DROVE Virginia to secession was them feeling that Lincoln violated the US Constitution and said work of the Founders and Framers. In this TL, he's not, and is in fact working well within the system as constructed, and thus the secessionaries are the ones whom are more outside the vision of the Founders than the Union is. After all, they're seceding fundamentally because they LOST A VALID ELECTION, not because the Federal government did anything that rises to the level of the grievances outlined by Jefferson.
Now, if this arrangement would keep North Carolina and western Tennessee in the union I'll grant is more up in the air, and unlike Virginia the US has less of a strong reason to court them and they lack the strong pride in the American Experiment that Virginia has. Further Memphis isn't as critical as Norfolk, so there's no reason to heavily court keeping them in the union. Tennessee might well split in half, perhaps taking some of the western N. Carolina counties with it to form Franklin, creating a finger of the US down into the CSA (though despite what many folks might think the CSA won't really care, those are Appalachian counties, not good for plantations and hotbeds of anti-slavery sentiment ANYWAY).
Might the South be forced by internal pressure to either pursue abolition or manumission in this timeline? Without the war, their economy has a very limited lifetime without stimulus from a war effort.
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
The CS Constitution unambiguously protected slavery, forever, no ifs ands or buts. Even decades before secession (and historically, the Civil War) Southern states were flat out banning abolitionist literature & being a member of any anti-slavery organization, punishing those who fell afoul of their laws, and they only ever got more paranoid & violent about this issue as time went on. I don't believe any amount of 'internal pressure' short of a full-bore revolution will suffice to force the abolition of slavery from within an independent CSA.
No, what's the likeliest cause for Confederate abolition is outside pressure, namely from Britain. They were literally designating all slave traders as pirates, having the West Africa Squadron seize the slaving ships and prosecuting the crews under British law for decades during this era, and basically nobody could do squat about it because they were the still #1 power on the planet. They also, naturally, exercised their (enormous) diplomatic/economic/legal power wherever they could to expedite the abolition of slavery in countries & colonies from Brazil to the Sudan.
In Brazil's case (as another country on the American supercontinent which, by 1872, had a population comparable in size to the CSA at 9-10 million), they forced Brazil to first agree to abolish the slave trade just to have diplomatic & trade relations with Britain at all to begin with, and then when the Brazilians lagged in enforcing their end of the agreement, the Brits applied the West Africa Squadron's might against Brazilian slavers. While the British didn't end slavery in Brazil directly, go to war to force them to abolish it or any of that, this sort of pressure did progressively cause the decline of Brazilian slavery; it wasn't the only reason, there were others like a big drought and the recruitment of slaves into the Brazilian military for the Triple Alliance War, but it was a huge one - prior to British meddling, Brazil had been the biggest market for slaves in all of the Americas for a long time. And the end result was that, indeed, slavery was already on its way out in Brazil for like a decade before the final abolition in 1888. Brazil couldn't do anything but take it due to both the insurmountable disparity in power & the British being one of their most important trade partners, and that will probably be true of the Confederacy too.
At some point, probably but not 100% certainly before 1900, Britain is likely just going to issue an ultimatum along the lines of 'OK, you blokes can either have trade & diplomatic relations with us or you can have your Peculiar Institution, make your choice now'. Since Britain is a massive market for Southern exports (so much so that the CSA tried to blackmail them into helping out vs. the USA historically with 'King Cotton', only for it to turn out that the UK can get plenty of cotton just fine from India & Egypt...) and the CSA really cannot afford to piss them off nor will anyone be particularly inclined to help them preserve slavery against British wishes (certainly not France, the CSA's likeliest partner-in-crime over Mexico if the Maximilian business still happens - they already abolished slavery for good in 1848 and will want Britain as a counterweight vs. Prussia/Germany), unless the Confed leadership is fully composed of only the most suicidally demented fire-eaters I expect they'll back down, amend their constitution to end slavery, and that will be that.
Thus the 'freed' slaves are almost certainly going to remain dirt-poor serfs bound to their masters' estates in all but name, but they will technically be free and Britain will (must, for the sake of Confederate diplomacy & economy) be appeased.
King Arts
Well-known member
Oh you meant that outside pressure aka the English would force it. Ok that makes sense.
Let's be fair here, the US also tried to aid in these efforts. While the US maintained slavery, it was actually a leader in abolishing the transoceanic slave trade from a legal perspective, with the first American law abolishing it being passed in 1776 and the only reason national laws took so long to get passed was due to Constitutional requirements, the support for abolishing it nationally was there long before the Constitutional time delay was up.
This is why I mentioned I think eastern TN would remain in the Union no matter what. When I said it was a hotbed of abolitionist sentiment, I mean that a town in eastern TN literally published the first abolitionist newsletter and in the actual US Civil War had to be proactively occupied by the Confederates in order to prevent them from pulling a West Virginia.
So in this scenario, even if western TN chose to leave to keep their slaves, the eastern parts would have none of it.
Wage slavery and Chattel Slavey are two very different things, even then there is a reason slavery didn't catch on in Southern Factories prior to the Civil War and abolition...
The first reason is to work in factories you need to be somewhat educated. You need your workers to be able to read an extent, for the purpose of reading orders or to find out details on what they need to make and how much of it to make, to read safety warnings, ect, the problem with that is many Southern states it was illegal to teach slaves much of anything on a mass scale for fear of a slave rebellion.
The second reason boils down to job skills, paid whites who had job skills needed for industry and are paid, don't want to train or work with unpaid slaves, they were seen as competition and an existential threat to their livelihoods even discounting more racial reasons.
Third paid workers mean workers who can buy your products, unpaid labor buys nothing. (Furthering capitalism enough said.)
Fourth factories are dangerous 'shock' (Especially prior to the 20's) injuries in them are high and slaves have high overhead cost, because the slaveowner 'factory' must be the ones to house and feed them, furthermore unlike wage slaves who could simply be fired and discarded at no cost if injured, if your underkilled and unpaid worker gets hurt by say getting their hand crushed in some loom or in some gears then you are suddenly left with a worthless investment, because nobody will want to buy a crippled slave at the cost of initial investment and you will have to sell them a loss or otherwise keep and lose more money.
In short Chattel Slavery just isn't built for skilled industry.
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Buba
A total creep
There was a passsage in a novel set in the antebellum South I read ages ago that a certain very injury prone task involving moving bales of cotton was given to hired Irish, not slaves, for expressly the reason you gave.
Yeah, slavery has an interesting dichotomy in how the labor ends up treated because slaves are, in effect, longer term labor investments that are expensive to replace. This means that if sick or injured with non-crippling injuries, slave masters are actually incentivized to give them a chance to heal and recuperate and even pay for treatment (so long as they are ACTUALLY sick and not pretending to be), but ALSO wants them uneducated and emotionally broken as to not desire to escape, which leads naturally to active, purposeful abuse.
Meanwhile wage workers for unskilled labor are short term investments and easily replaced, thus injuries and sickness result in immediate termination to bad for them, but those jobs also require at least basic education in reading and math, and because you need workers to come to you, you actually want them to have at least a bit of an independent self-starting streak. The abuses here are mainly from neglect and simple disregard, not malice aforethought.
Meanwhile wage workers for unskilled labor are short term investments and easily replaced, thus injuries and sickness result in immediate termination to bad for them, but those jobs also require at least basic education in reading and math, and because you need workers to come to you, you actually want them to have at least a bit of an independent self-starting streak. The abuses here are mainly from neglect and simple disregard, not malice aforethought.
King Arts
Well-known member
But you can have educated slaves. Look at ancient empires. As for an industrialization, you can just get around the fact that slaves would be competing with free whites by doing one of two things. Either ban slaves working in certain fields, or second make a sort of wellfare/caste system where the free whites are all soldiers/police whose job it is to maintain security, and the slaves basically do the other work. Sort of like Indias caste system with Kshatriyas enforcing the Brahmans rule and all the others had to obey.
Heck you could just also slowly ban slavery except for domestic duties so people can have personal slaves as servants but they won’t be competing against freemen in the economy. A system like that is still slavery yet it would not cause damage to modern day economies.
The question here is not that, but will there be two thirds of the Country who is willing to back this even in the face of British threat? I have my doubts.
Ancient empires weren't industrial ones, nor did they operate in a world which was slowly phasing out the practice .
Again, we are talking about the Confederacy not the dominion of drakka or whatever slave state you have in mind. The odds are much greater of this not happening than actually happening by an insane margin, you are talking about the Confederacy wining a terrible lottery.
At that point why keep slaves at all? The confederacy will receive flak for keeping slaves in whatever form, the confederate constitution furthermore bars abolition why would people overcome those economic forces and political forces to force a ban only to half ass it?
King Arts
Well-known member
My argument was against people saying that slavery is impossible to maintain in an industrial society. Not that the Confederacy's system was sustainable in the way they would have slavery in a modernizing world or that the other stronger states would not force them to end it.
raharris1973
Well-known member
I think this overestimates Britain's powers as superhero.
Both the "super" part and the "hero" part.
The Confederate government, and the individual states of the Confederacy, not to mention the specific wording of the Constitution, will be riddled with veto points impeding any legislative or executive action impairing a 'right' of citizens to hold property in human slaves. Great and power business interests, the Confederate State Department, the President, even many Confederate consumers may be seeing rising costs of friction with Britain, or any other foreign critics of slavery, but they'll have ample reason to fear not only violence or assassination if they try to overturn the law for 'raison d'etat' or the 'national interest', but even just losing in court in a famously litigious society where the law is one of the most prestigious professions. The Confederate government will balk for quite a long time at courting a civil war, within itself, to abolish slavery. Even individual state governments will have concerns about generating fatal divides over government legitimacy among the white citizenry over the issue.
British leaders will condemn rhetorically, bust any illegal slave trading attempts [this is likely more of a concern in a Deep South only CSA, if the upper south 'breeding states' like Virginia are in, they would like to enforce the slave trading ban in the constitution], but they'll realistically calibrate their threats and promises with loopholes so they can't be pinned with unequivocal failure if and when the CSA balks.
The number of raw cotton consuming countries for textile manufacture will increase, not decrease, over time. Demand, mostly centered on Britain, France, and Belgium in the 1860s, will expand to Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Japan, by the end of the century.
If it comes down to the ultimatum you're describing, the Confederate government and states won't ultimately sweat a break in official diplomatic relations, even with Britain or anybody else. Especially because they'll likely keep consular relations for practical reasons. An actual, fully enforced trade boycott or embargo would get their attention, but that would also take longer and be more difficult for the UK government to commit to.
By the time Britain could be working up a consensus to go that far, the 90s or 1900, Britain's dominance, and splendid isolation from allies was grating enough on other powers that there would usually be some market or another interested in spiting Britain, over issues as diverse as the straits or Egypt or the Boers, that one or more of them could be willing to trade with the CSA, publicly or on the sly, out of a mix of spite, profit, and desire to be independent from British controlled controlled cotton sources.
Once we get to about 1900, Britain will know it can't single-mindedly focus on forcing change in the CSA, and needs to balance that with other concerns.
The CSA's attachment to slavery would simply be a much tougher nut to crack than Brazil's. And Brazil never faced such a stark, unsubtle 'abolish it now' ultimatum from Britain before abolition happened in 1888. Nor did Spain get one from Britain prior to Cuban abolition in 1886. At least I've never seen it documented. If somebody has a document showing Britain forced abolition at this time, or got Spain or Brazil to commit to a definite timetable at some earlier point using an ultimatum, I'd like to be shown it. Spain was a Kingdom and Brazil was an Empire, each with indifferent, changeable constitutional histories when they did abolition, the Confederacy would have been a constitutional republic, with many more veto points.
Even more importantly, neither Brazil for its abolition, nor Spain for Cuban slavery abolition, faced an international ultimatum, backed by embargo or boycott, with the participation of Britain AND other major international consumers like Germany, France, and the United States. I imagine to really bite and threaten their economies, international boycotts or embargoes would have had to been threatened or imposed against Cuban sugar, or Brazilian coffee and sugar. But I never heard it asserted that any such thing happened. Because at least that much pressure, by *all* those European markets, and the United States to the north, would be needed to make the state government of CSA see the writing on the wall.
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
Well, I guess it is theoretically possible that the independent CSA (especially a deep-South-only CSA, which would contain all the craziest fire-eaters with much fewer moderates to balance out their influence) would rather commit economic suicide than abolish slavery even post-Brazil and Cuba, but I suspect that under some pain the non-slaveowning-population (and probably some slaveowners even) would sooner decide that having a decent economy & not being an international pariah (again, the CSA would be the only country in the Western civilizational sphere to still have legal slavery if they still have it post-Brazilian abolition) is well worth at least nominally abolishing their Peculiar Institution.
And that's assuming they don't commit national suicide in a more direct fashion. Like by restoring the slave trade (which some fire-eaters really were braindead enough to propose IRL) and then freaking out when the Royal Navy starts seizing slaver ships as they often did, whether at sea or by directly sailing into Confederate ports to do so (which they were doing to Brazil by about 1850), perhaps to the point of doing what Brazil was too smart to do and opening fire on the Bongs for violating their national sovereignty. I cannot imagine such a conflict would go terribly well for the CSA, especially not for a Deep-South-only CSA most likely to reach this precipice in the first place and then still commit such a blunder (as it'd be more of a backward agrarian shithole, Virginia in particular contributed much of their industrial capacity historically - IIRC 1/2 of the CS military's cannons were produced at Tredegar, the Gallego flour mill in Richmond was the largest of its kind in the CSA and the world before its destruction, etc.) and if it really comes to that, Britain can comfortably demand abolition as part of its peace terms in victory.
I'd argue such extreme measures were not needed in the cases of Spain and Brazil, which were more compliant with British efforts to undercut the slave trade and in general had less of an extreme ideological attachment to slavery & the racial politics further undergirding it. Again, for example, while Brazil did try to skirt their various anti-slavery accords with Britain at first, they gave up once the Royal Navy started sailing into their harbors and seizing slaver ships under the (silent) guns of their forts.
The CSA meanwhile would have to bring back the slave trade decades after the USA agreed to abolish it and Britain has made it abundantly clear that it'll crush the trade wherever it can, and admittedly they did have a not-insignificant cadre of politicians/intellectuals who were insane enough to advocate such a policy. Not some nobodies either, but people like William Yancey who was an architect of the Breckinridge candidacy in 1860 and basically one of the CSA's more extreme 'new founding fathers', and whose legacy would be unchallenged in a 'CSA secedes without a shot fired' scenario. I do not believe it is inconceivable that Britain would explore options they never felt the need to (as said previously, for example, slavery was already visibly waning and Brazilian slaveowners were manumitting their slaves at a higher rate for some time before the Lei Aurea's passage due to a combination of British pressure & other factors) in the other cases.
And of course, as I said above, we also have to consider the possibility that the Confederacy might actually be dumb/crazy enough to go straight to war with Britain in response to the RN doing their usual anti-slavery business. Which is not something Spain or Brazil ever dared to do either. I think @S'task has made a good case that Virginia at least might stay out of this Confederacy without Lincoln moving to suppress the initial secessions, which would not only terribly hurt its industrial capacity but also throw the internal political balance in favor of the wackiest fire-eaters (one of the more prominent guys to challenge Yancey on the slave trade issue was Virginian Roger Pryor, for instance, and Pryor was already an ardent secessionist and slaver himself, he just wasn't as demented as Yancey).
In that case I think the odds of the CSA blundering into a full-on war with the UK over the slave trade spikes upward (a CSA psychotic enough to bring the slave trade back is one that I think will be psychotic enough to open fire when the Royal Navy inevitably starts raiding their ports for slave traders as was done to Brazil, realistic assessments of their fighting strength vs. Britain's be damned), and I really don't think that's a conflict they can hope to win (especially not in a Virginia-less condition, VA was really critical to their already limited industrial capacity in the real ACW). If it really comes to that - well there's no historical precedent for the Brits directly abolishing slavery at the point of their (pre-)dreadnoughts in a western country either, but this would be a golden opportunity to set such precedent.
As far as cotton consumption goes, Britain I know for sure was able to comfortably make up for the drop in Southern cotton with Indian & Egyptian replacements when the CSA tried to blackmail them over 'King Cotton' historically. I'm not terribly sure any foreign power would be able/willing to help the CSA out against Britain either. If the course of history outside of the Americas still looks anything like it did IRL, the French are going to want British help as a counterweight against Prussia/Germany; they were willing to eat a humiliating L on Fashoda to appease Britain for the sake of the anti-German diplomatic strategy, why would they stick their necks out for the CSA, and over slavery of all things? Russia was generally pro-Union, had decent relations with the US (even outside of the Civil War context) before the October Revolution and all the ensuing problems to my knowledge, and can't really project power to help the CSA in any meaningful way to begin with; the Great Game between them & Britain was also starting to wind down around the turn of the century.
Germany's diplomacy in the Americas from this time period - the only significant actions they took that I can remember is that 1) they worked with Britain to blockade Venezuela over some debts, 2) that time Kaiser Wilhelm went full supervillain and dreamed up an invasion of New York for reasons that didn't make a whole lot of sense (fortunately for Germany, the plans remained theoretical and were ultimately completely shelved) and 3) German Haitians controlling much of that country's economy by 1910. I guess they'd have motive to want to take Britain down a peg, but I really can't imagine them being able to do a whole lot in support of the Confederacy to do it, especially if those nutty fire-eaters have gone and started a direct war with Britain.
King Arts
Well-known member
Well if the Union did not have a war with the CSA then and Virginia might actually attack and kill the British themselves. Now sure they might not care for slavery but the Monroe doctrine is a thing so they’d stop the Brit’s from taking over the CSA.
Circle of Willis
Well-known member
The US needed Britain to enforce the Monroe Doctrine for it until the very late 19th/early 20th century, funny enough, (it coincided with British interests often enough) and it's not a coincidence that the time in which its unity was interrupted by secession & the ACW was when the French did their thing in Mexico and nearly got away with it. If anything a US that lets the CS go would be weaker still and even less able to enforce the MD on its own, the US military was tiny pre- and post-ACW, without such a war at all it will never have grown to the gargantuan size that allowed it to intimidate the French into leaving Maximilian to die in a brief window of time IRL. The South also provided a disproportionate amount of manpower and officers both to the US military historically, which is another thing they'd be missing with the CSA being independent.