If the South won the Civil War, what do you think would have happened to Lincoln?

Well, I'm not entirely sure that something special would happen to Lincoln. He'd probably be regarded as a failure, yes, but that's not the end of the world.
 
Wow. Gone for a week and this turned into quite a thread. Anyhow, upon further study, I have learned that the British at the time were aware that the U.S.A. had the Russian Empire as an ally and chances are, they too might have joined the conflict. The British Forces in British North America were also highly outnumbered by the U.S. Army. I question if the U.K. would have sent them men and/or supplies from the Mother Country, but they'd have to get pass the U.S. Navy first. All and all, it seems that the U.K. did the right thing because there could have been all kinds of trouble if they became involved, and were okay with a formal apology on behalf of the United States for the Trent Affair. I also doubt if the people in England and their troops would have really wanted to become apart of this big mess and risk their lives and for what?

It just seems to me that whenever I read a more pro-CSA point of view, many of them seem to think that if the U.K. did help that it would have resolved the C.S.A.'s problems and that there is no way the U.S.A. would win, but when you really look at the details of it all, I'd say they would have a fighting chance and who knows, perhaps Canada or some parts of it would be apart of the Union today if there was a third war between the U.S.A. and the U.K.


Anyhow, even if the U.K. did not become apart of the war and help the C.S.A. win and the men in gray were able to win on their own, I like to think there would still be a Union. I still stand by what I typed in my first post in regards of Lincoln.
 
Its hard to say. There are ways it could shatter, but I think its more likely to be shattered from events coming from there - that is, the loss of the war wouldn't cause it, but that timeline would probably see something happening. The US would not be the country it is, that's for sure.
 
I think the very fact that the Union fought the war and gave it everything they had created a bond between the states that would be difficult to shatter. Win or lose, the Union was forged in the fire. But if the Union hadn't fought, or hadn't fought hard, it would have shattered like a dropped porcelain doll.
 
I think the very fact that the Union fought the war and gave it everything they had created a bond between the states that would be difficult to shatter. Win or lose, the Union was forged in the fire. But if the Union hadn't fought, or hadn't fought hard, it would have shattered like a dropped porcelain doll.

Yeah. I'm not sure how much of that was the war forging bonds or that the Union not fighting hard would indicate that there weren't such bonds (or the foundations for them) to begin with.

Just musing on the eternal "chicken or the egg" question as it applies in that regard - did the war forge unity, or did the fact unity existed make it possible for the Union to win the war?

"Both." seems safest.
 
...the C.S.A. becomes apart of the British Empire and slavery soon ends peacefully in the late 1870's."

Not likely. I have serious reservations that CSA leaders--many of whom were staunch states' rights activists and secessionist firebrands to begin with--would even agree to become subjects of another strong, central government; this one a non-republican monarchy just like the one that venerable Continentals defeated in the American Revolution.
I also have doubts that slavery would have ended peacefully...especially if it was at the urging of the CSA's new mother country, Great Britain. The facts show that Britain was largely opposed to slavery at the time of the ACW. It is one of the reasons why Britain was reluctant to recognize the CSA as a sovereign nation in the first place, much less ally in war against the USA. I don't think that Britain would have tolerated slavery in a new commonwealth like the CSA.
As such, the CSA would have felt the pressure from the mother government to end the practice, and the South's response probably would have been something like its response to the USA after the election of 1860.
The only way for slavery to have ended peacefully would have been for industrial technology to make it economically obsolete.
 
It is now 1863 and the Union has been defeated. Would Lincoln be able to continue his term as President? Would he be blamed for the loss? Would he be reelected in 1865? Would he continue to live in the U.S.A? What would he do after his Presidential term was over?

Yes to question number one. Lincoln's resolve was such that he wouldn't have just resigned in disgrace over a lost cause, and losing a war isn't, in and of itself, cause for impeachment and removal from office. So, I think he would have stayed until March of 1865 when the new President would be sworn into office.

Yes to question number two. The coach always get blamed for the loss, regardless of the fact that it was his players who lost the game. Presidents get blamed for military defeats, too, because they are the commanders-in-chief of military forces. What they say and do goes.

No to question number three. (BTW: Lincoln was re-elected in 1864; he was sworn in for his second term in March 1865.) Lincoln probably wouldn't have been re-elected. He may not even have run for re-election, either. But again, considering his resolve, he probably would have anyway; but republicanism and Lincoln would have likely gone down to defeat in 1864 with a lost war. Voters of the 1860s were as fickle and difficult to please as the voters of today.

Yes to question number four. Why not? Even Nixon continued to live in the USA despite being impeached and resigning from office in disgrace. Besides, I'm not so sure that Britain would have welcomed him into the Commonwealth of Canada, considering that Britain would have been a political and military ally of the CSA.

In regards to the last question, Lincoln in all likelihood would have retired to his home in Illinois, and probably would have continued a small legal practice there. He may even have continued taking on fugitive slave cases out of Missouri as he did before he entered politics.

No doubt that a lost war would have dramatically changed the way history judged Lincoln, and the way we think of him today. I guess when one gets right down to the brass tacks of politics, it really is all about winning and losing.
 
Dovetailing from my last post, Lincoln's life might still have been in grave danger as the war's loser. If not some lunatic Southron, then a disgruntled Northron might have felt angry enough to make an attempt on his life...either during or after the war.
 
Dovetailing again with regard to the hypothetical that slavery would have ended peacefully in the 1870s. It likely would have ended much sooner than that. If the CSA didn't get completely up in arms over British insistence to end the practice, there probably wouldn't have been enough slaves left in the south to make plantation slavery viable for very long. If the war ended in 1863, then that means the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 would still have been issued and thousands of slaves would still have left their plantations and migrated north into the United States as free blacks. There might not have been enough of the slave population left to continue things as they had been before the Proclamation was made. With British industrialization in full swing, I think this would have swiftly replaced manual labor in the CSA commonwealth, much to the chagrin of the plantation aristocracy.

Something else just struck me, too: Lincoln probably would not have faded into the kind of obscurity that this hypothetical scenario suggests. Why? Because of the Emancipation Proclamation. He would at least have been credited with ending slavery in the United States, even if the CSA had tried to revive it in victory. He would likely still be a civil rights icon much the way that Frederick Douglass, Dred Scott, Sojourner Truth, D.E.B. DuBois and others et al of the Nineteenth Century are today. He may not have been canonized to the extent that he was, with his visage on all sorts of monuments, currency and articles; but he still would have been remembered enough to receive some canonization as a champion of freedom and civil rights.
I don't think, in retrospect to my previous post, that Lincoln would have been as disgraced simply losing the war. A failure, yes, but only to the extent that he lost the war; not to the point of disgrace, ostracization or alienation.
 
Independence for the Southern States would have inevitably helped hasten the natural death of the institution of slavery but the "Emancipation Proclamation" would have had nothing to do with it.

lincoln's proclamation freed not a single slave. It did not apply to States or parts of States "not in rebellion". If other words it only "freed slaves" in territories in which the US government had no physical power to do so. It was at best a PR gimmick designed to discourage Britain from openly aiding the Confederacy and also a cynical attempt to foment a Haitian style slave insurrection in the South. The EP also was of very questionable legality (ole abe himself referred to it as a "war measure")

Think about this though: What if the Potomac river and the northern borders of Tennessee and Arkansas (or even the Ohio and the northern border of Missouri ) had become an international border? No more Supreme court mandate for enforcement of the fugitive slave laws. Unless the northern states took drastic steps to prevent it any slave that could swim or walk could be free any time he wanted, at least in the upper South. Once slavery became untenable in the upper South the rest of Southern Slavery would have inevitably fallen like dominoes.
 
Independence for the Southern States would have inevitably helped hasten the natural death of the institution of slavery


How can anyone even think that?

Given the vehement attitude of many in the South towards abolitionist's, a good number of who (real or imagined) were murdered, whipped, hung, and or just plain run out of town/country, regardless of their rights.

Just look at the "Texas Troubles" during the secession crisis. Also look at the KKK's actions right after the war, and the hatred towards the "Freedman’s Bureau". Folk in the South were not inclined to change their attitudes easily over night.

Slavery was not going to go away any time soon if the South had won it's independence, they were willing to secede & fight for the institution.

I just wish folk didn't have to be reminded of these facts all the time.

Kevin Dally
 
Think about this though: What if the Potomac river and the northern borders of Tennessee and Arkansas (or even the Ohio and the northern border of Missouri ) had become an international border? No more Supreme court mandate for enforcement of the fugitive slave laws. Unless the northern states took drastic steps to prevent it any slave that could swim or walk could be free any time he wanted, at least in the upper South. Once slavery became untenable in the upper South the rest of Southern Slavery would have inevitably fallen like dominoes.

I will take that then as a confirmation from you that the Fugitive Slave Law was being enforced and working, and I'll hold you to it. Even so, the logic here is fatally flawed. "Any slave that could swim or walk could be free any time he wanted"? Really?? So slaves had no problem escaping the posses and bloodhounds of the South (assuming they could escape their masters in the first place)? Yet somehow the Northerners were able to catch them and send them back?

The 1860 census showed that 803 slaves successfully escaped that year. That's out of a total of almost 4 million, for a total of 0.02%. That's nothing more than a dribble. Even if that number doubled after secession, it would have been no more than a... double dribble.

P.S. - Have you ever tried to swim across the Ohio River?
 
I will take that then as a confirmation from you that the Fugitive Slave Law was being enforced and working, and I'll hold you to it. Even so, the logic here is fatally flawed. "Any slave that could swim or walk could be free any time he wanted"? Really?? So slaves had no problem escaping the posses and bloodhounds of the South (assuming they could escape their masters in the first place)? Yet somehow the Northerners were able to catch them and send them back?

The 1860 census showed that 803 slaves successfully escaped that year. That's out of a total of almost 4 million, for a total of 0.02%. That's nothing more than a dribble. Even if that number doubled after secession, it would have been no more than a... double dribble.
I'm of the opinion that, even had the southern states seceded legally (through the courts) and peacefully (through the courts), the very situation O'Buadair describes would have led to war. There would have been no incentive for US states to assist in the perpetuation of that awful institution, and trespasses by groups of patrollers would have been inevitable. Also inevitable would have been the stringing up of some of these groups.
Bullies that are used to picking on people held to be defenseless do not, as a rule, react well to being resisted, with the result being incursions of TN or AR militia into free states of a free country in order to retrieve the unfree and return them to an unfree country.

That would be a cause of war.

Add to that, the inevitable hardening of the northern position. The convenient middle ground would disappear, and activities like John Brown's would have found many willing donors.

No, the deep affection for the peculiar institution, the rejection of democracy, and the insane levels of vanity by elements of the leadership were going to propel the southern states into war. Few things were more certain.
 
I'm of the opinion that, even had the southern states seceded legally (through the courts) and peacefully (through the courts), the very situation O'Buadair describes would have led to war. There would have been no incentive for US states to assist in the perpetuation of that awful institution, and trespasses by groups of patrollers would have been inevitable. Also inevitable would have been the stringing up of some of these groups.
Bullies that are used to picking on people held to be defenseless do not, as a rule, react well to being resisted, with the result being incursions of TN or AR militia into free states of a free country in order to retrieve the unfree and return them to an unfree country.

That would be a cause of war.

Add to that, the inevitable hardening of the northern position. The convenient middle ground would disappear, and activities like John Brown's would have found many willing donors.

No, the deep affection for the peculiar institution, the rejection of democracy, and the insane levels of vanity by elements of the leadership were going to propel the southern states into war. Few things were more certain.

Yep, I agree completely. And I'll add to that the need for territorial expansion to accomodate the rising slave population. Where were they going to get that territory from? War was inevitable, peaceful secession or not.
 
The 1860 census showed that 803 slaves successfully escaped that year. That's out of a total of almost 4 million, for a total of 0.02%.
I got the impression that 803 slaves were at large when the census was taken -- not necessarily escaped that year.
 
Yep, I agree completely. And I'll add to that the need for territorial expansion to accomodate the rising slave population. Where were they going to get that territory from? War was inevitable, peaceful secession or not.
Sounding like a broken record here, but I still believe that the slave-owner meant Central America and the Caribbean when he talked about territorial expansion, and complained about not being able to take their slaves into the territories. Watch the other hand.
 
Sounding like a broken record here, but I still believe that the slave-owner meant Central America and the Caribbean when he talked about territorial expansion, and complained about not being able to take their slaves into the territories. Watch the other hand.

Very possible. But in the tangled world of international politics, I have little doubt that the USA and CSA would have ended up duking it out over the issue.
 
Independence for the Southern States would have inevitably helped hasten the natural death of the institution of slavery but the "Emancipation Proclamation" would have had nothing to do with it.

lincoln's proclamation freed not a single slave. It did not apply to States or parts of States "not in rebellion".

I disagree. Here's the first part of the EP:

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free..."

Clearly, Lincoln included even those states in rebellion, because he did not recognize them as independent of the U.S. Yes, the EP was somewhat of a PR gimmick and military measure. But it worked.
With most of the white male population marching off to war, who was to stop the slaves from leaving their plantations and fleeing north to the U.S.? Many did. Industrial cities in the north swelled with former slaves.
So, to say that the EP did not free a single slave is incorrect. Yes, it did. Not legally, perhaps, but many slaves believed themselves free and thus took the initiative to leave with no one left on the plantations to stop them.
 
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