Confederate Populist Backlash

To expand on what I said about Birmingham earlier.

There was a similar situation brewing in Southwestern Virginia before/during the war that was affected by the Union's victory.

Big Stone Gap, Virginia. Just across the line from Johnson City, TN and Kingsport, TN and Bristol, TN the "Tri-Cities". Big Stone Gap had large iron deposits and was being looked at for investments in steel production just like Jefferson County, Alabama was.

So, the Tri-Cities could very well become the "Quad Cities" that the Confederate government can put alot of defense investment into. So Washington, Sullivan and Hawkins Counties in Tennessee and Wise County, Virginia may have 50-70,000 each in population.
 
I still wonder if a newly independent Confederacy could have ever, ever, changed it's social structure where it came to slavery.

We do have examples, even after the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th and 14th Amendments, of blacks being denied their rights and kept in a position of near slavery for decades after the Civil War.

Why do we assume, in the light of this actual, historical, evidence of the lack of social change, it will be all sweetness and light with a Confederate victory affirming the right to own slaves?

An Anglophonic Brazil with apartheid-esque laws and serfdom in some places. That's what I imagine by 1910.
 
Good imagination.

Well, I'm not creatively as lazy as Turtledove. Who just straight up went down the path of, "they become Southern Fried Nazis!!".

Besides, I view my breakdown of how it would look to be realistic. It's still an American nation, the whole socialism part would never be popular in an evangelical protestant society.
 
Well, I'm not creatively as lazy as Turtledove. Who just straight up went down the path of, "they become Southern Fried Nazis!!".

Besides, I view my breakdown of how it would look to be realistic. It's still an American nation, the whole socialism part would never be popular in an evangelical protestant society.

That's one view.
 
That's one view.

Well that's why we brought up the populism here.

Real life, historic, rural Southerners have a tendency for it. Usually with anti-leftist, anti-communist, anti-socialist, anti-labor, centrist to far-right religious fervor.

The cultural framework in the Confederacy would still be there, and it would still happen in some form.

An excessively socially conservative CSA, with social safety nets and populist economics, that still embraces the pre-emancipation years of it's cultural history. Stuff that Henry W. Grady espoused.
 
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Slavery would have been kept minimal and maybe lasted another decade. at the start of the war, Army Privates made $12 a month, Marine Privates made $9 a month. New acquisitions would have been through slave birthrates. Even at that, the Northern bankers had financed slave acquisition who were sold at $800 to $1500 prior to the Civil War.

The New Deal did help the South - but also the North! This was not a program focused on one portion of the country. My "Yankee" grandmother, in the 50s, had indoor plumbing, a gas stove, coal central heating, electricity and phones, an electric washing machine. My Southern grandmother had a large kettle outside for doing laundry, a shack out back for answering nature's calls, oil lamps to read an sew by, wood burning heating stove, and a wood burning cooking stove - no phones. The disparity was marked! It wasn't until the early 60s that my Southern relatives stared getting all the stuff my "Yankee" grandmother had. (My Southern half never owned slaves).

To be absolutely sure, the war cost the North, the good will of the South (and has had ever since) pus it put blacks on the same par as whites which created some unusual stresses and irritation during elections at the polls.

Knights of the Golden Circle would certainly have affected politics and may have succeeded in attaining their goals of a slavery ring around the Gulf of Mexico. This would have been done by the moneyed "movers and shakers" (probably mostly Northern investment money). Too be sure, the South's recovery would have been faster without reconstruction but not as fast as we might like to think.

A very good book that provide a Scottsman's point of view in observing the American Civil War experience is called Life in the Confederate Army by William Watson. This work was originally published in 1887. His observations of the American political machinations are as spot on for the time as they are today.

While it may be worth a thought or two of a divided country today if the South had won, what if differences were ironed out decades later and the U.S. reunited by common cause instead of bayonets?
 
A large standing army would be needed to deter US from another war resulting in Prussian style military service. This would create populist pressure for public schools, hospitals and old age disability insurance. The slaves would flee to US or Mexico finishing off slavery by 1870 before the CS had recovered enough strength to stop them.
 
Some time ago, I read the following book: EDMUND RUFFIN SOUTHERN: A STUDY IN SECESSION by AVERY O. CRAVEN pub 1966. Ruffin was a Southern Fire-Eater and played a big role in secession insurrection in South Carolina and was well known across the South. As per Craven's book (if I remember correctly) the Fire-Eaters believed Southern Slavery would solve all problems especially the expected growing problem of class conflict between the Haves and Have Nots. Yes Virginia they were already worried about Marxism and the working class with Marx's writings appearing in the 1840's. Fire-Eaters had in their minds a simpleton procedure of simply giving a slave or two to the poor white non-slaveholders across the South thus these whites would be engaged actively in slavery thus would be always supportive of the Greater Slaveholder Elites. In fact they did not expect any of these new slaveholders whites to ever have to do any serious manual labor due to having a few slaves. It would be a white man Paradise and all would be happy. In this sense, there would never be a Southern Populist backlash to worry about and slavery would last a very long time.
 
The Confederate States is going to be a country of light industrialization.

There are 5 cities off the top of my head that are conducive to that sort of economy in the South.

1. New Orleans: Already a major shipping hub, cultural center and cotton export hub. When oil is eventually found in South and Western Louisiana and Texas. New Orleans is the prime candidate for the nouveau riche and Confederate oilmen to start using the city as the headquarters for a multi-billion dollar Oil and Gas Industry. This in turn will attract rural whites across the Confederacy to Louisiana for jobs.

2. Houston and Dallas: The same as New Orleans, much like historically, the oil boom will cause a population migration across the Confederacy to Texas.

3. Atlanta: Spared from Sherman's wrath, the city's landscape looks almost completely different than we know it. Already a major hub of rail transport and communications. Atlanta's centralized position in the Confederacy makes it an ideal location for a standardized railroad network. As well as an eventual radio network for news and information across the country. Hello Ted Turner!

4. Birmingham: Known in the 1860's as the small village of Elyton (Eely-ton), Jefferson County, Alabama was well known for it's iron deposits. Just like historically, a group of independent financiers, from home-grown Confederate cotton planters, Yankee steel magnates and European investors will kick start the steel foundries that will create a large industrial center for the Confederacy. Also attracting rural whites and blacks to the city in large numbers.

Some other places:

Charlotte, North Carolina: Charlotte will largely be dependent on cotton textiles like it was historically.

Charleston, South Carolina: It's highly possible since the war never ravages South Carolina, Charleston may see an uptick in production for shipping.

Nashville, Tennessee: Known in the 1850's-60's as the "Athens of the South", due to the large presence of colleges in the city. Particularly Vanderbilt. Nashville will be the city, just like Atlanta, a center of white, Confederate culture and intellectualism. That will especially become true when sociologists start going into the Tennessee mountains with recording equipment and come back with bluegrass, folk and country music. And commercialized "hillbilly music" or "cracker music" gets sent all over North America. Hello WSM radio!
Kinda makes you misty eyed thinking about what might have been, eh?
 
By 1910 South Africa is self governing and it faced no external threat. South Africa in common with the American South is a majority Protestant nation with an extensive history of slavery even after 1837.
In common with the American South their economy was originally based on agriculture and latter mining. In common with the American South both regions skipped the Industrial Revolution
In common with the American South Africa had de jure segregation.
Leftyhunter
Your description fits the USA almost as well as it fits the southern section of the country.
 
It's very possible.

Here's a report commissioned in 1938 that describes pretty well why the South had economic problems between the Civil War and WW2.

Thanks for this link DanSBHawk, compiled over seventy years after the Civil War it’s a truly depressing read. The sad thing on reading it, as I did from start to finish (it’s only 70 pages), was that it didn’t have a chapter called, “Solutions”. Thanks again.
Poorville.
 
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