America Today

dawna

First Sergeant
Joined
Feb 20, 2005
Location
canada
I'm sure that this has been discussed many times before, but it's relatively new to me. I am trying to envision an America today, had the South been allowed to peacefully secede. What would the political, economical, and cultural structure of the United States look like and would racial relations be better, or worse? What would morale be like in the South today?

Dawna
 
Dawna,
This is from the What If threads. What if the South had won the war. Not exactly an answer to your question but here you go.....



Here is my attempt. Please bear in mind it is just a rough (very rough) hint of an outline. For me, to actually do this concept justice it would take a long long long time with a lot of very serious bouncing ideas off people.
Notice I never did complete it. Typical slacker ain't I?


March 9, 1862...CSS Virginia defeats the Monitor. The CSS Virginia uses solid shot rather than shells. The blockade is broken. And the CSS Virginia goes on to attack the enemy's fleet below Old Point, and proceeds to the York river and destroys McClellan's transports.

April 6 and 7, 1862, Shiloh, Drinking bad hillbilly whiskey the week before the battle, Grant goes blind.....The Confederates win a stunning victory.

All further military advances towards the south are met with stiff resistance and failure....

1864, Lincoln loses to McClellan. McClellan formulates “The Great Peace” with the Confederacy.

Kentucky and Missouri secede and join the Confederacy. Border wars in Kansas, Kentucky and Virginia persist until the turn of the century.

March 7 1866 Irish Republican Army under the command of John O’Neill and "General" Spier
invades Canada from the US. Despite the US’s declaration of innocence Great Britain declares war on the US. The Confederacy maintains neutrality while building it’’s naval power.

In 1868 Lincoln is elected to the US Senate. 1872 Lincoln is implicated in the Credit Mobilier scandal.

McClellan is assassinated by Thomas P. “Boston” Corbett during his 1872 reelection campaign. William Seward is named as an accomplice and hanged. Many question his guilt. John Surratt, believed to been agent for Great Britain, flees the country to live out his live in London.

1870 The British, with the aid of the Sioux, Blackfoot and Cheyenne invade the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin. British land troops north of Chicago.

October 8, 1871 Chicago is burned by the British while ransacking the city for beef.

1872 Germany allies with Britain.

1875 Confederate president Longstreet blockades and invades Cuba. Spanish soldiers put up stiff resistance until the defeat of the Spanish navy in the Battle of The Caribbean Sea

1874 A.P. Hill leads troops into Mexico. Annexing of portions of Mexico begin. Relationships with France become strained....Hill dies of unknown illness.

1876 California secedes and forms the Bear Republic. Agrees to a Peace treaty with Great Britain.

June 25, 1876 Gen A. Custer’s Division is wiped out by the joint forces of Chief Crazy Horse and Brevet Colonel Henry Grierson

September 7, 1876 The British are routed at The Battle of Northfield.


1881 Brazil joins the Confederacy.

1881 French Guiana sold to the Confederacy for 6,000,000, known as Hampton’s folly.

1881 Washington and Oregon Secede and join the Bear Republic.


1882 US-UK War ends with the Richmond Accords.

1895 Venezuela joins the Confederacy. Work begins on the Nicaraguan Canal.

1900 Great Depression.

1901 The Bear Republic signs The Pacific Trade agreement with Japan. Secretly finances revolutionaries to help delay the completion of the Nicaraguan Canal.

1902 The Bear Republic and the Confederacy agree to help co-finance the building of the Trans America Railroad from San Francisco to Rio de Janeiro.


1963 Future president of the world Tommy is born.

And there was much rejoicing
 
Ok, I believed everything up until the 1963 birth of the new president. You had me till there!! And just a "rough draft"? I'd say you've been thinking about this for a while sir! Very interesting perspective.

Jenna
 
It's hard for me to imagine how one act (peaceful secession) would have completely altered history and the face of the United States, but President Tommy has some interesting ideas!

Dawna
 
I'm not prepared to go as far into the future as Tommy did, but I'll say at the outset that nothing I'm going to say here would preclude the possibility that he would become the future president of the world.
wink.gif


Anyway, Tommy's scenario was based on the South winning the war.

Many other people have devised similar scenarios, based on a presumption that the CSA, having won the war, would remain a strong and solidly unified nation.

If, however, the southern states had been permitted to secede peaceably, as Dawna postulated, there would have been no Civil War to create the strong unifying bonds that result from engaging in a struggle against a common enemy. With the northern states having shown no interest in taking any military action against them, I can't see that the southern states would have had any reason for forming a military alliance against the North.

If there had been no war, I have to wonder whether those states, having seceded individually, would have seen any reason to form any sort of unified CSA government at all.

And if such a government had been formed, one of its fundamental founding principles would have been that any state had the clearly established legal right to secede peaceably from any sort of union with any other state, whenever it felt so inclined. Such a government could have broken up very quickly and easily, as soon as various states decided that their interests were not being well served by allowing various other states to have a say in how things should be done.

My guess is that after a peaceable secession, the South, similarly to the Italy of that era, would have consisted of a number of small, independent states, and would have remained that way until and unless a Southern version of Garibaldi had come along.
 
Think of it. Der Kaiser's Imperial Germany courting both Mexico and the CSA against the United States (or what's left it after 1861). There'll be two Zimmerman Telegrams. Mexico would be promised California and perhaps Arizona & New Mexico. The Confederacy would get Cuba, Maryland and Kentucky and some of the states in the Great Plains.

Dogfights will take place over Washington D.C. as Beauregard biplanes of the JEB Stuart Wing tangle against Union's Saber Squadron of the Sheridan Air Group. Takakakakakakakakakaka! Yep, the Confederate Air Force will be for real and it won't be John Cleese shouting "Albatros!"

Of course, the North will have an edge as it will have a larger fleet of dreadnoughts. Then again, with their submariner tradition, the Union's dreadnoughts may be locked up in Norfolk or Bangor or New York and unable to sail out for fear of having a "fish" put into their side.

(Message edited by Gary on October 22, 2004)
 
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