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Had The South Prevailed

Buckeyes85

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What would have happened to our neighbors to the south had the Union either let them secede to start with, or gave up the fight at some point during the war? I personally think it would have been, at least long term, a disaster for the south in that slavery was going to have to end sooner or later and they would not have had any help from the north re booting a post slavery economy.

Within 25 years, I bet most of the states would have petitioned to rejoin the union- but that's just my 2 cents.
 
Look at the current economies of most of the states that comprised the Confederacy. And that's with the money they receive from the federal government. It would have been Mexico North.
 
Buckeyes85 said:
Within 25 years, I bet most of the states would have petitioned to rejoin the union- but that's just my 2 cents.
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Oh, yes.

Many people agree: If President Lincoln had had the wisdom to let the South leave, there is a big chance that eventually the South would have asked to reenter the Union.

If the South had been allowed to leave, many (most?) of the slaves would have gone north.

Then the remaining slaves would have been treated better because the masters would have wanted to keep them.

Some experts feel that eventually the slaves would have been freed and slowly and carefully integrated into Southern society.

As it was, one day they were slaves; the next day they were governing states and telling their former masters what to do. Of course, the Caucasians were shocked by this sudden change.

Sadly, Mr. Lincoln went to war, and 600,000 young men died.

The most horrible tragedy in this country's history.
 
Not that they got a tremendous amount of help from the North. The 1860 economy in the south did not recover to that same level until the 1960's. I suspect an independent nation wouldn't have done any worse. Northern reconstruction was harsh without Lincoln in the White House. The world wanted southern cotton and the destruction of the Civil War had set it way behind. Slavery was going to end, a little later than it did but it would have had to come to an end. Every argument for how it would have been is pretty just guessing because so many things would be different. The good thing is, the nation remained and developed into the strongest country in the world. We have problems, but if politics would stop getting in our way we would be better off. Opportunity is plentiful in the U.S.
 

It was the South who were determined to go to war if need be in order to maintain and extend slavery at any and all costs. They just bit off more than they could chew. You can hardly blame that on Lincoln.
 
watsup said:
It was the South who were determined to go to war if need be in order to maintain and extend slavery at any and all costs. They just bit off more than they could chew. You can hardly blame that on Lincoln.
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I may be wrong, but I think that President Lincoln said that slavery could not be extended but that the South could keep its "peculiar institution."

Too bad for those 600,000 young men (and their families) that the South did not accept Mr. Lincoln's offer.
 
And I suspect that if the South had somehow remained independent, and if there was eventually a need for less slaves, then you would have seen a wholesale genocidal slaughter of them. They were seen as on essentially the same level as livestock by their masters, and that’s what farmers have traditionally done with a glut of livestock. Best case scenario would have been putting them back on boats and shipping them back to Africa, but that would cost money and the masters wouldn’t see the need to do that when there was a more immediate and cheaper “solution”, namely genocide.
 

Not sure the basis of the claim "Lincoln went to war" in that the South first attacked the Union.
Plus, not exactly a great idea if you are trying to preserve a country to let states leave and come back at their leisure- presumably after negotiating the terms of rejoining.
 

He was determined to see the Union remain intact, and rightly so. Had that not happened, the middle of the North American continent would have devolved into constant war such as there had been in Europe for centuries as independent nations and states engaged in conflict to establish and re-establish boundaries. God Bless Mr Lincoln for making a tough but absolutely necessary decision.
And again, it was the South who had been building up for war as a result of his election and their fear that Congress would indeed establish more rules against the extension of slavery.
 
The South had decided that they were going to become an independent nation in order to maintain and extend slavery to the west. Mr Lincoln was determined to keep the nation unified. The South fought for slavery. Lincoln fought for a continued Union. Thank goodness the he prevailed. There would have been even more wars eventually had he not.
 
That's a pretty over simplification. The South was itching for a fight. It had been brewing for half a century and both sides were ready to get at it. I'm not sure about the South petitioning to rejoin the Union. Pride goeth before the fall. And the Southern pride led them into war and it wasn't likely to just vanish. Look at today's "southern traditions". Maybe it would have happened, its even probable but I don't think it would have taken only 25 years. Maybe as an aftermath of WWI, so roughly 50 years. Big problem was the south's near total dependence on agriculture, another reason they just couldn't hold up to the Norths industrial advantage during the war. South needed manufacturing, cotton industry that had been over 3/4 of the worlds cotton product and part of Southern staples (cotton, rice, tobacco, naval store) what were 60% of the U.S. exports) had been ruined. With no real investments in manufacturing or railroad development, rebuilding was next to impossible at the needed pace.
 
While getting my degree in economics I had to take a course called the history of economics in America. Part of that concerned slavery in the South. At the time of the Civil War the most profitable part of slavery was the buying and selling of slaves. You have to remember that the land in the South that was used for their major crops was becoming unusable. They took nutrients out of the soil, but at that time failed to put back as they would today. So large land holders had to continue to buy land farther west to continue planting the same croops and that is where they ran into the North wanting to cut off the west from further slavery. If the South had won the war, no telling how this country would have been divided and at what point slavery would no longer have been financially viable with the advent of machinery to do what salves were doing before.
 
I don't mean to interrupt things, but I just wanted to say that this is one of the most interesting threads and thoughful posts I've seen in a while. Good job, everyone!

Carry on.
 
Emily L said:
I don't mean to interrupt things, but I just wanted to say that this is one of the most interesting threads and thoughful posts I've seen in a while. Good job, everyone!

Carry on.
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You are welcome to join in......
 
Slavery would still be around if the confederates won. They enshrined it into their constitution.
 
One problemo, the confederates wrote their constitution in such a manner that forbade abolishing slavery.
 
Bottom line: It was a war between two entities who were determined to preserve certain traditions, the South in preserving the tradition of slavery, and Lincoln to preserve the Union.
 
independentusa said:
If the South had won the war, no telling how this country would have been divided and at what point slavery would no longer have been financially viable with the advent of machinery to do what salves were doing before.
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I agree- no telling. But its fun to take a wild guess- which is the whole point of the thread. And the fact it was more profitable to be in the business of buying and selling slaves does not alter the fact that having free/slave labor was a huge economic issue.

As to land owners wanting to move west, that no doubt could have led to a 2nd war as the union was not going to let the south land grab to the west and the South- as we know, could never ultimately defeat the north in an all out war. So in short, the south would have stayed as it was as far as the territory.
 
bomberfox said:
One problemo, the confederates wrote their constitution in such a manner that forbade abolishing slavery.
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Are you suggesting that if but for the north winning the war, the south would still have slaves?
Obviously not. The institution was going to die sooner or later- as it did in every industrialized country.
And don't forget, our own constitution once counted slaves as 3/5 of a person, and that obviously changed.
 

Southern Victory

Southern Victory (also called Timeline-191 after General Robert E. Lee's special order #191) is a series of 11 books by Harry Turtledove, with an alternate history starting in 1862 during the American Civil War, where the South (CSA) wins the War of Secession after allying itself with Great...
turtledove.fandom.com

The 'alternate history' novels by Harry Turtledove are very good. 11 books in total go into what might have happened if order 119 hadn't been lost and discovered by the Union and had Lee won at Antietem. Basically, the South would have allied with France and England and the Union with Germany.
 
Yes. That is exactly what i am claiming. They expressly forbade it in their own constitution. This “every industrialized country” nonsense is a rather useless narrative considering how behind we are now to “every industrialized country”
 
OK, now I understand because as we all know, once written, constitutions can never change.
 

They all knew slavery would die if it couldn't expand.
 

My understanding is that Davis had a hell of time dealing with states that wanted to go their own way. I read it once somewhere and would like to learn more about it.
 

For the next 100 years they had share cropping, convict leasing and peonage - slavery by another name.
 
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