I feel like stirring the pot this morning.. If the Civil War was never fought...

If you gave slaves factory jobs, that otherwise would be relatively well paying and otherwise go to working class white men, you'd completely overturn the structure of southern society?

No one's going to break with the union so Henry Ford can make more money. Or so plantation owners can make the transition to the industrial age. And if you have no threat of a CSA, that makes getting rid of slavery a whole easier.

 

Kevin Wilmot made an interesting if simplistic movie called "Confederate States of America" that is a Ken Burns style mockumentary supposing the South won. While it's made largely to point out how blacks have been used in American advertising throughout the past 200 years, it does show a modern world where slavery exists and slaves are kept under a dosage of prescription pills so that they don't revolt.

 

Another solution might have emerged I think. Perhaps the federal government could have purchased the freedom of all of the slaves and then outlawed the practice.

 

I voted for Before 1900, but in reality, it would have either died out before 1900 due to economic reasons or hung on in obstinate fashion probably until the World War II era and possibly beyond, and would have been ended by force.

Would not have happened in the 1900-40 period, which may well have been one of the most virulently racist eras in American history, and not just in the South either.

 

That was one of the worst fucking movies I've ever seen.

Such a waste of an interesting premise.

 

The Stepford Slaves.

 

The South's economy was, and still in large measure is, an agrarian one. Beyond that, the main crop was (and still is) cotton. So I'd submit that the "advancement of technology" line of thinking wouldn't have come into play until the late 30s/early 40s, when mechanical cotton picking machines became commercially available. Farmers needed hands, and lots of them, to pick the cotton until a cheaper way came along to get it done. In the absence of the Civil War, it's hard to see what else would have changed their minds. I'm with those who believe if it hadn't happened in the 1860s, it would have at some point.

 

What time will the correct answer be revealed?

 

Considering that anyone who publicly advocated the abolition of slavery anywhere in the putative C.S.A. in 1860 would have been immediately hung from the nearest tree, I have always found the idea, usually promoted by Lost Cause apologists, that slavery was "about to die out of natural economic causes" preposterous.

Quite to the contrary, a key issue of the whole Civil War was the authority to expand slavery into the territories opening up in the West. Pro-slavery forces had every intention of pushing slavery not only past Texas into New Mexico and Arizona, and from there it would have been a short leap to annex a hefty slab of Mexico to give the South access to the Pacific.

And there were already plenty of plans being made for the annexation of Cuba, and most likely most of the Caribbean islands as well. And beyond that lay the rest of Central and South America.

A victory for the slave states, either through military means in the Civil War or simply by Northern inaction/acceptance/submission, would have meant a huge resurgence of slavery throughout the world.

As Hitler and his buddies proved some 70 years later, technological advancement was certainly no barrier to the use of slave labor, so I see no likelihood increased industrialization in the later 19th and early 20th centuries would have led inexorably to emancipation.

The argument that paying workers dirt-cheap wages is cheaper than maintaining a slave labor force is preposterous almost beyond discussion. If the workers don't like the dirt-cheap wages you are paying them, they can just leave. If your slaves try to leave, you can kill a few, or a lot, which should deliver the message to the rest they ought to stay.

And however little you are paying your peon workers for your dirt-cheap wages, you can pay slaves less. Whatever you are spending to house, clothe and feed them, you can always cut it in half. Who's going to stop you?

If and when any do-gooders start marching into the South demanding to inspect slave quarters to ensure humane treatment of slaves, well first of all, 99.878% of said do-gooders will be hung from the proverbial nearest tree, and second of all, the minute the creature comforts and basic human rights become items of public concern, the shit is in the fire as far as keeping them as slaves at all.

With billions of dollars in investments tied up in the slaves, no way in hell the south would have ever allowed it.

So presuming the outcome of the decade of the 1860s is dramatically different, a United States divided into probably no fewer than three regional nations (USA. CSA and a Texas Republic) -- and possibly more --- would certainly have been ripe for cultivation by opposition forces in both WWI and WWII as well.

Even if the unanimity of American forces was only weakened rather than destroyed, the outcome of both world wars would likely have been dramatically different.

Not to mention the capacity of the U.S.A. to buy Alaska from Russia in 1868 probably would have been a real longshot. Just think of the 1950s Cold War with Soviet IRBM bases built up around Anchoragegrad and the Soviet Navy ringing the Aleutians.


So I don't think we'd be rid of it yet. Much less in places like Brazil and South Africa.

 

Pretty cogent analysis, Starman. You probably exaggerate a little when you say anyone in the South who advocated the abolition of slavery in 1860 would have been "hung from the nearest tree." There were a few isolated Southern politicians who argued that slavery was an albatross around the South's neck and who were very much opposed to secession, Sam Houston being among the most prominent. They weren't hung, but they were made pariahs, and either shuffled off to the sidelines where they couldn't cause trouble or fled to the North and allied themselves with the Union.

Certainly, you are correct that a big part of the conflict was the possible expansion of slavery into the Southwest. The annexation of parts of Mexico, Cuba and South America to spread slavery was probably a pipe dream, but there's no question it would have been on the CSA's wish list had they successfully left the union.

And you are very correct when you say a Balkanized America would have been a disaster for the West in the 20th century. I can easily envision a scenario where the various nations of America are tied into the entangling alliances that pulled Europe into a general war in 1914, dragging them into the fray with devastating consequences. That's the main reason I argue (despite my Southern background) that the Confederacy losing the Civil War was the best outcome for the greater good.

Not sure I buy your Alaska argument. I think either the U.S. (the North) or Canada would have made a concerted effort to buy Alaska from Russia regardless of what was going on elsewhere. And the fact is Russians were looking to unload Alaska, because they couldn't afford its maintenance and they needed the money.

Good stuff, and an excellent debate.

 

It's hard to imagine the 'little brother' of whatever family of North American nations emerged from a USA breakup not becoming a prize target for alliance by the Axis powers in WWI for sure.

Probably around 1900 Texas, containing a lot of desolate scrub land, would have been that little brother, but after another 10-15 years and gasoline suddenly becoming a hot worldwide commodity, things would be way different.

Presumably the Texas Republic would include a sizable chunk of land expropriated from Mexico through one means or another, and we know Germany made a run at Mexico during the war.

In any case if the Axis could have gotten any of the American nations on board, or even to stay neutral, it's hard to think WWI would not have ended essentially in a nobody-wins/nobody-loses stalemate (it kinda did anyway, but while nobody really 'won' WWI, Germany certainly took it in the shorts in the final shakeout).

As far as Alaska goes, my guess is Great Britain would have bought it and appended it to Canada.

 

While certainly a minority, there were Southern abolitionists. White people didn't usually get lynched for the stance.