[WHAT IF #2] WHAT IF THE SOUTH HAD WON THE US CIVIL WAR?

Bootie

Bootie

FGM OWNER
Staff member
Joined
Nov 5, 2009
Messages
22,865
Reaction score
6,425
Age
47
Location
Scotland
This is one of those questions that has probably so many answers it is hard to comprehend.

Perhaps our American brothers can cast their thoughts on this.

What if the South had won the US Civil War?

CSA.jpg


It would be the end of the Union for sure but how would North America shape up if the result had of gone the way of the Confederates.

Some things to consider.

Would America be split into countries?

Lincoln would probably not have been assassinated?

America may not have become the world power it is today?

Would the southern countries of North America attack into South America... would Canada be invaded too?

Ok... lets hear what you guys have to say on the topic. :)
 
Interesting "What If" .... although looking at resources, the South never had a chance of militarily winning the war, only exhausting the North's will power to continue the fight by making it too costly. (turns out in the end, the North had plenty of tomach for the fight ) ... other option would've been to get a powerful ally like Britain on its side to ecnomically strangle the North, but that would only have happened if the South had abolished slavery -- so no go there, really)

Interestingly, come the late 19th and early 20th century, the Confederacy would've been quite wealthy as it sat on most of the US oil reserves.
 
Had the South prevailed, there would have been an even faster expansion West, as both Americas tried to dominate the continent. I strongly suspect that the South would have annexed Mexico at some point, but I don't think Canada would have been endangered.
 
*Cough* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Victory_Series *Cough*

I've been meaning to read this series for a while. The World War series by the author is brilliant.

I think there would have been tense rivalry for generations and possibly a second conflict sometime in the 20th Century over some territorial dispute being pulled into a a wider war through alliances with different sides. This North America focus would have meant there wouldn't have been a a USA block exerting it's political, economic, cultural and military reach across the world over the 20th Century so there would be enormous differences.
 
Englands economy was devastated by the American Civil War over the loss of cotton imports for the textile industry. It was only at Antietam and later Gettysburg that England made the decision not to actively back the South as they saw then that they wouldn't win and they decided to stay neutral. It's possible the South could have won. You would have seen two nations develop instead of one and become trading partners. The two parts weaker than the whole with profound ramifications later in history... would we be an arsenal of democracy against fascism or a bulwark against communism? Would we have joined WWI on the British side - recall that it was a huge debate in this country given 60% of Americans were German immigrants - it was possible at the time we would have joined Germany, especially if a separate south as a repayment to England joined England in that war... maybe a new American Civil War as a result. No Spanish American War? --- many, many ramifications and imponderables.
 
This is actually a really interesting question, but I do not think the south, even winning the civil war, could have survived very long.

One of the largest problems with the south was its government. It was woefully ineffective. Since one of the major tenets of the South was small government and state's rights, the central government had very little power and authority. During the civil war, the South faced a manpower shortage as the government did not have the power to raise armies, due to the states blocking them. Even if they had won the civil war, their government would have managed the country terribly, leading to possible ruin.

Another large point is the economy of the South. The South was a agricultural economy in a time of growing industry. The south had very little infrastructure, and not many miles of track. They also lacked the factories to produce any finished goods from their raw goods. This means many countries could outproduce them (as the US did historically), leaving the South behind in the dust in terms of economics.

Another point about the economics, is that their economy focused entirely on "King Cotton". The South did not have a contingency plan in place, in case something happened to the cotton. And just a little while later, something very devastating happened to all the cotton. A bug call the "Boll Weevil" came to the South. This bug destroyed nearly all Cotton in Georgia, and across most of the south. This meant that their policy of Cotton based economy would not have held up, if they had succeeded in the Civil War.
 
There are dozens if not hundreds of excellent books on the subject and I imagine every scenario we can think of has been addressed in some way or another.
Strategically, the Confederacy's chances of success would have been much improved with a European ally capable of providing war materials to southern ports. That would have needed to coincide with those same allies using their navies to prevent any blockades.

As Rico pointed out the British Navy would have been a no go, so it would been left to the French or other country on the continent to provide that role. Even if the British had been sympathetic to the Confederacy, they likely would have discouraged any other European country from getting to cozy in the Caribbean or south Atlantic with a significant naval presence.

We tend to consider these events at the military level, but its always about politics and any confederate victory would have been an untenable truce. I can imagine the Confederacy having the military success to sue for an armistice, but never the ability to force the North into an unconditional surrender and that would be necessary for the South to have any hope of consolidating their victory into a long term peace.

A Confederate victory would have led to a balkanization of the US because it would have shredded the US Constitution. I know some here will argue that the South was entitled to secede because of articles in the Constitution, but if secession was based on slavery, then the South's argument evaporated.

PS. I don't want to hear a rant about how slavery was allowed at the adoption of the Constitution, and drafters of the Constitution owned slaves and all that rot. Anti-slavery advocates were very much involved at it's drafting and continued to peel away at it while maintaining the union for about 60 years without having a civil war. A better question may be would there had been a civil war at all had the Kansas-Nebraska Act not passed or the Missouri Compromise?
 
If the South had won, they would have been under enormous pressure from the rest of the world to do away with slavery, which basically defeated the purpose of fighting a war in the first place. England had already done it and so had Russia. Most of the rest of Europe had also already done so or would soon after. There would have been boycotts and with no market for their goods, slavery would have to be abolished or it would have been economic ruin for the Confederacy. The Europeans would have started growing cotton themselves in Africa or South America and wouldn't have needed southern cotton. There was also the industrial revolution to take into consideration. The mid-late 19th century was a time of great creativity and ingenuity and new labor saving devices were being patented all around the world. Human labor was being replaced by machine labor and the machines could do more work in less time and at a lower cost than a slave, they never got tired or sick and potentially could have a longer productive life than a slave and factories could churn out more machines faster than slaves could reproduce. They did break down from time to time, but it's easier to fix a broken machine than to fix a broken slave. Machines also didn't run away if they got the chance. The South would have had a lot of problems even if they had one and I don't realistically see them solving most of them. The Confederacy would have been petitioning for readmission to the United States inside of 20-25 years.
 
One interesting point brought up in a book of "What if" was that slaves escaping north to Canada, where the was no slavery, and Canada refusing to return them, would cause so much animosity that eventually the United States would have declared war and invaded Canada.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom