Civil War History - "What if..." DiscussionsWhat if they had attacked instead of digging in...? What if he was in charge of the army instead...? Did you ever have a "What if..." question, and you weren't sure where to post it? Here's the place to ask these speculative questions!
A CSA insurgency would've had to have been very violent early on to have been successful.
Murdering Lincoln as he passed through Baltimore or as he skulked into Washington in the middle of the night would've been a good start. Brahamin Yankee William Lloyd Garrison would've had to have been gunned down in public. Fugitive slaves like Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown would've had to have been Lynched! Dozens of women in the American Anti-Slavery Society, women like Maria Weston Chapman, Lydia Maria Child, Abby Kelly, Lucy Stone, Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others could've been silenced by being sent to Australia like that baby killer in Quigley Down Under.
The Liberator newspaper, the African Meeting House and the Charles Street Meeting House in Boston would've had to have been burned to the ground. Perhaps at an appropriate time when they were full of fire breathing liberal abolitionists.
Don't tell me it couldn't have gone that way. We all know it could've very easily.
Last edited by Ozark Iron John; 09-21-2007 at 11:51 AM.
Historical Precedent, argues that it would Not have been very Easy. (nor very successful)
As the other posters have noted, the leaders of such a campaign would, Necessarily, have been different from those who supported southern Independence, in reality.
Very few (IF Any) of the Leadership of the south, viewed the goal of southern independence as being compatible with being an outlaw state. They did not accept would not accept that they were indulging in the illegal act of Revolution, much less would they have supported the cut-throat actions of muderous outlaws.
and throughout the South, mass executions of worth less slaves. Something along the lines of what the US Army was doing to horses in that Don Johson movie, In Pursuit of Honor. Old men and women. Agitators and trouble causers. Slaves with injuries or sickenss and disease. Maybe they could've deported some of 'em to Cuba or Brazil but mass executions would've made the news up North. Headlines like "If we can't have 'em, We'll get rid of 'em!" or something like that would've gone a long ways towards silencing any/all discontent with regards to the peculiar institution.
Last edited by Ozark Iron John; 09-21-2007 at 12:22 PM.
Eugenics is alive and well, and living in Missouri.
As mentioned several times in previous posts such actions would have been totally incompatible with "southern honor." (There is evidence that the Partisan Rangers Acts were repealed because the CSA Congress didn't approve of the concept.)
If we can get past that point, I can easily imagine most of the south immediately getting the Sherman Treatment -- something that wouldn't have been imaginable during the first years of the war without the extreme provocation under proposal.
Stop digging, John.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
I cain't help it ole. It's like that danged game, Whack-a-Reb. They just keep poppin' up! Besides, I'm just hypostulatin'.
What if that scoundrel Garrisson had been gunned down outside of Faneuil Hall and his newspaper burned to the ground?
What if them two old black men were found stung up in the Boston Commons and those black meeting houses were destroyed by a couple wagonloads of explosives parked out front late at night?
What if them goody two shoes high faluting Brahamin socialites found themselves on a slow boat with a one way ticket to Sidney?
What if old honest Abe fell under the tracks in Baltimore?
Finally, what if the slave holding aristocracy admitted that slavery was a bad thing and took steps to rid themselves of the perculiar institution?
Are you tellin' me we'd still have had to fight that horrible war?
I don't think so! Sure there'd be hell to pay. Sure some folks would be up in arms, but I don't think the South would've been provoked to seccession and I don't think the US Army would've ever had to invade the Southland.
Last edited by Ozark Iron John; 09-21-2007 at 01:40 PM.
Why would Union soldiers be executing their most valuable allies in locating and combatting the depredations of White terrorists?
Ex-slaves would have been of inestimable value in helping to Whack-Rebs.
Why would Union soldiers be executing their most valuable allies in locating and combatting the depredations of White terrorists?
Ex-slaves would have been of inestimable value in helping to Whack-Rebs.
OpnDownfall, you misunderstood me. I don't mean to suggest that the US Army would've set about exterminating slaves. There would be no need for the federal government to be invovled at all.
What I'm suggesting is what if the slave holding aristocracy of the south had made proclomations about the moral and ethical wrongness of slavery and committed to rid themselves of the peculiar institution and took the path of mass executions of their less valuable slaves as a starter?
Every plantation could've marched 10 or 15 or 100 or 200 of 'em out into the back forty and pushed 'em all in a hole. I believe that would've caused quite a stir up north. Folks would be sayin' "Hold on there, wait a minute, don't go to extremes!" I bet they wouldn't have had to kill more'n a few thousand and they'd a found themselves with a fugitive slave law that would've worked. Plus, they'd a gotten rid of all that dead weight. Slavery wasn't cheap ya'll. No matter what you think, old men and women, injured and sick, trouble makers. 90 percent of the problems come from 10 percent of the population.
Think outside of the box, ya'll. It ain't that hard to comprehend.
This "what if" has merit. We didn't have to fight that war.
Last edited by Ozark Iron John; 09-21-2007 at 02:04 PM.
This "what if" has merit. We didn't have to fight that war.
And in that, John, you are finally beginning to make sense. Slavery wasn't really threatened. Heck, it was constitutionally protected. But there was a group of southern radicals that believed it was. And somewhere in there they used that fear of freed slaves running rampant through the countryside abusing and marrying white women. That sort of thing still has its followers.
It was that fear that the fire-eaters used to create the ultimate rift. There are many accounts of slave-owners and southern politicos who recognized that the worst Lincoln could do was to continue the ban on slavery in the territories. And that recognized that slaves in the territories was not a sustainable idea anyway.
But they played on the idea that "forbidden" was the hangup--nevermind the "impracticable" aspect. So they whumped up a fever around the "may not." Read an account by either Olmsted, Ried or that other guy (I'll think of his name tomorrow, but it probably Olmsted) about a guy in Kansas who was upset because he had thought about moving to Newbrasky and getting a slave or two. Now this guy didn't and hadn't owned a slave. All he knew was that land was available, but he couldn't go there because the slave he expected to own wouldn't be allowed.
This shows me, at least in this instance, there was a resentment of something that was promoted as resentful. The fact that there was little likelihood of real offense just went ziiinnnnnggggg.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Don't be facetious. All that has been established is that such a campaign was feasible. But it's practicability has not been established, outside of fevered imaginings.
The success of such a program seems to be dependent on the fact that the average northerner was less committed to the Union than the average southerner was to secession.
I am not so sure that the avg northerner would have been any more squeamish about hunting down and shooting confederate bushwhackers than they were about doing it to southern soldiers.
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