What if the Confederates Won

[gem]

Roger Ransom talked about his book, The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been, in which he imagines how the United States would look if the Confederate states had won the Civil War.

http://www.c-span.org/video/?313045-1/book-discussion-confederate-states-america

 

[Henry Whitworth]

Yet another "what if" Confederate victory fantasy where slavery is conveniently and somewhat magically ended in short order, Germany unifies in the same way and WWI happens on schedule in an alternate universe.

I do appreciate his thoughts right at the end of the interview on the nature and value of "what if" questions in history. But if I was in his class, I'd definitely challenge his conclusions.

 

[Booner]

But if I was in his class, I'd definitely challenge his conclusions.

And you would be just as right as him.

 

[Booner]

I mean, we are talking "IF' right?

I just posted in another thread about a half hour ago how I don't like to speculate on history. It's one thing to say "if X" had happened then the result would have been "Y" Keeping it in a close time span is ok. put to speculate IF X the 30 years later Y would happen--no I do like to do that.. As my grandmother told me once, as a young man, "If frogs had wings, they wouldn't wear their ***** out hopping"

 

[JPK Huson 1863]

Anytime ' slavery ' is spoken of as an entity all by itself instead of 4 million individual people , gives me the willies. One, more day in prison is one, more day. You hear this a lot where ' slavery ' would have just kind of petered out all by itself. Eventually. How many generations yet unborn would that have taken? Children, mothers, fathers, grandparents- if these were specifically the families of people who put forward this cavalier theory they would get how awful it is to say that out loud. It's really quite shocking.

 

[TinCan]

I'd have to get a passport to go back home to Texas......bad idea.

 

[unicornforge]

On a slightly different note: I have read a theory that if the Confederacy won, then the Axis may have won WWII, and possibly eventually invaded north America, thus enslaving just about everyone in the U.S.

 

[KScott]

On a slightly different note: I have read a theory that if the Confederacy won, then the Axis may have won WWII, and possibly eventually invaded north America, thus enslaving just about everyone in the U.S.

If the Confederate States had won, much more of the world would be speaking German, these days.