If the CSA had succeeded?

[DJ Psychomike]

It goes like this- I make a statement. I am called on to back it up. I do.

Then I'm told I'm cutting and pasting and giving links instead of just writing off the cuff!

****ed if I do- ****ed if I don't.

I did however earlier list a bunch of things which I speculated could have happened if the South won, but these were all dismissed. (Which leaves the definition of WHAT IF? toi mean if it slams the South its good, if it doesn't it isn't even a what if!).

Here is what I wrote, which completely baffled many readers apparently. If the following isn't a WHAT IF scenario, what are they?

Let's look at what the two leaders were aiming for. Jefferson Davis wanted the integration of blacks into white society, and adopted a black child towards that end.

Lincoln wanted to send all blacks, free or not, back to Africa.

The south still had slaves, but so did the North (Grant took his wifes into battle with him saying, "Good help is hard to find").

Once the South ended slavery, France and the UK would have recognized Dixie. The North would form alliances with Russia and Germany is my guess. There were loads of Germans coming into the North after all.

There would be no Indian Wars because the South had promised to uphold the treaties the North had already been breaking. Canada upheld their treaties, so when we had our Indian Wars there were none in Canada. There is no reason to think the South wouldn't keep their word.

This brings us to a very interesting point, the railroads! While even Northern history books decry the period of the robber barons who set about taking land to build railroads on, historians have fought tooth and nail to keep out of the books who was President when this enormous land grab occured.

It happened under Lincoln.

Who retains the name "Honest", even though historians rip the railroadders! Go figure!

With the Indians in the West allied with the South, the North would have to back off.

World War 1 occurs, and the North continues their alliance with Germany.

The South however, votes on whether or not to go to war. Instead of a President demanding citizens go to war, the south has a vote. My guess is, a Southerner rises, says the founders warned us not to get involved in foreign affairs, and the vote is overwhelmingly against war.

The South stays on the gold standard (at the current value of $800 an ounce, what would a Confederate dollar be worth?), the North to pay for wars and social programs begins printing IOU's (our current form of money).

If only........

By the way, to have trade with the UK and France the South would have to outlaw slavery. Without that trade the South could not survive. Speculation that the South would join Hitler, etc, is just a smear. What would make the South stronger than the North would be keepig money tied to gold and silver, avoiding foreign entanglements and integrating blacks into society while the North barred blacks from industrial states and tried to deport them - these actions would have made the eventual outcome far different than what we've been led to believe.

[Elennsar]

Okay, first off.

1) I don't know about Davis here, so I'm not going to comment. Lincoln, however, recognized that colonization was neither accepted or even desired, so he dropped the idea (what he thought in the back of his head would take a telepath to uncover, and the evidence from what is knowable doesn't indicate it was firm commitment to the idea).

2) Reference, please. And an apostrophe, unless you're implying Grant was a lustful bigamist (I'm next to positive you meant wife's, however.)

3) France, definately. England, maybe maybe not. (Harder to tell.) Assuming the Confederacy would have definately abolished slavery seems shaky, but we can assume it could have (perhaps in response to Cleburne's proposal?).

4) The South may very well have broken the treaties. They wanted to expand out west too, that would have done it. There's no reason, other than something to the effect of "Yankees are liars, Southerners always keep their word." to assume Southern honesty is a given and that the United States/North would act exactly as historically here.

5) You're getting your railroads mixed up. The (majority of the) Robber Barons were east coast. Land grabbing not involved. The lands the railroads had in the West were given by the government (local or Federal) to help get them to build the lines.

6) Okay, we can assume European history moves pretty much as historically, though I'll bet things would happen so it wouldn't (nothing specific is coming to mind, but history being history...). But that's a personal speculation, its not proof against yours.

7) Why would the Confederacy have elections by the people (instead of the government) determing who goes to war, and what would make it less interested in going to war than the United States (in this scenario or our world, which was quite uninterested as is)?

8) Economics aren't my strong point, so I'd want to look this up, but there's a very good reason that the world went off the gold standard. Its certainly not because governments like "IOUs". (After all, borrowing money requires a good credit rating. Paper money = IOUs is oversimplifying. Anyway.) And where would the South get enough gold and/or silver? Colorado and California (and Nevada) are Union.

8) The South managed to have plenty of trade during the war and before it without outlawing slavery.

9) There is no foundation to believe that the Confederacy would have integrated blacks into society better than the United States did historically (even if Davis wished it, he's only in office for six years, total, and he's served most of that term by 1865. What he does after that is a hard question without knowing the details of what happened to end the war.)


Now, I don't think its inevitable that the South winning would be a god-awful disaster (either for Southerners or the world at large). But assuming a better outcome rests on a shaky foundation. One major consequence of Union defeat would be loudly proclaiming that democracy cannot handle internal crisis.

This, even if the Confederacy was perfectly decent (up for debate, but seperately), would strongly encourage those opposed to democracy.

Similarly, the Confederacy's economic position is pretty dreadful without massive alterations in the economy.


To belatedly answer your original question.

A what if asks what would happen if you made a subtle or not so subtle change in history.

Your what if (and plenty of others) seems to be "what if we got what we wanted". We being the side that had things go more favorably.

This is not untrue of pro-Union whatifs. But since "what if the Confederacy had X go well for it?" is more common (I think) than "What if the Union had Y go well for it?", you see Confederate victory theories shot down more often, all things being even.

I think your theory falls apart on one crucial area, so far as plausiblity goes.

You assume that Europe (and the rest of the world) do not act in ways that hinder the Confederacy and that the United States doesn't do anything that causes great disruption either. The sailing is too smooth.

Hinder here does not necessarily mean cause war. But if the Confederacy tried to take over Central America, say, I am positive that there would be a response. What kind? I'm not positive. Would it succeed? Who knows? But your what if treats it as if none of that would happen.

Is this making sense? I don't want to belittle your whatif scenario undeservedly, but I don't feel it would go as you predict, either.

[DJ Psychomike]

Howdy Ellensar, sorry it has taken me a bit to respond to your comments but I've been swamped.

I'm not sure a "what if" scenario can by its nature be right or wrong. It becomes a question of what's more believable. Since Lincoln had put up $500,000 to start the process of deportation I take him at his word. The part Lincoln supporters despise is that his emancipation ideas were clearly linked to deportation. This does not remove the fact that Jeff Davis supported reparations for slave owners, full integration of the blacks into Southern society. Lincoln was not alone in thinking of America as a white society as you can read at my Lincoln blog:
http://lincolntruth.blogdrive.com

Grant went into battle with the slaves of his wife.

The South could not have survived as a slave state as nations like England would not have traded with them. There is no reason to believe a Southern victory would have resulted in overturning Jeff Davis on the slavery issue.

Actually before the war the South DID try to abolish slavery- the Northern states that had slavery blocked the measure.

The record on Northern politicians lying to Indians is exhaustive. Canadians, who are even further North than yankees, didn't lie to them. It is a fault that has less to do with locality than morality. I would suggest googling what Robert E. Lee and southerners of the day thought of the term "duty". Then look up Lincoln's biggest supporters- the Pullman railroad family ( Lincoln's relatives and pals were put on the board and handled the Pullman Strikers), and then we get to Boss Tweed and Tamminy Hall
http://www.albany.edu/~dkw42/tweed.html

of which prior to 1865 there is NO Southern equivelent. Now why would that be......

The Confederacy by staying with the founding fathers vision would have been less likely to get entangled in foreign affairs.

Real money beats IOU's. There would be no housing projects, welfare, or wars with huge debts if we had remained with the gold and silver standard.
http://mises.org/story/3073

Now, another what if. Could the South have remained neutral in World War 2 if it had been manipulated the way America was in reality by Churchill?

That I can't say.

[DJ Psychomike]

By the way, Churchill wrote on "WHAT IF THE SOUTH HAD WON", and guess what he said would be the result?

He believed there would have never have been a first world war.

Now we all know WW2 started because of the after effects of the first war.

Which according to Churchill, would never have happened if the South had won.
http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/siteinfo/newsround/iflee.html