The Confederacy's future: an alternate historical guessing game

[Musicat]

[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
What does Republican imperialism under McKinley and Roosevelt have to do with the South? The GOP was incredibly unpopular in the South, and never won any elections there once Reconstruction ended up until the Civil Rights movement.
[/QUOTE]
Look, the movie’s fantasy. It only has a grain of truth for its development after you accept the major premise. I’m not defending the choices made by the writers, only pointing out that their extrapolations had something to start from and didn’t come from thin air.

Expansion west and south didn’t have a “natural” stopping place as Mexico’s boundaries were much less distinct than now. The movie’s writers claim there was talk of further expansion before the Civil War, although I haven’t tried to verify this. I don’t find it hard to believe. Think Gadsden Purchase and Texas.

The ides of conquering NYC surprised me, too. I’m sure the parallel is Sherman’s march to the sea. The general probably didn’t have to do that to win the war, he just kept on rolling. Perhaps the Confederates would have done the same thing if they met no resistance at Washington and felt equally jubilant. The concept of stopping the war machine when you have made your point is pretty 20th-Century. Before that, people like Alexander the Great and Napoleon just continued their conquest as long as they could supply the troops and weren’t defeated too badly.

[ralph124c]

The only chance to "win’ for the South was to swiftly capture washington, and put Lincoln on trial. But what then? Presdident davis would have an impoverished country, dependent upon exports of cotten, tobacco, rice to the North No dount, he would have had considerable difficulty repaying the loans extended by the British. my guess, the old South elite plantocracy would be bankrupt by 1890-and the south would lapse into a period of economic decline. Most of the slaves would be escaping to the North, and the South would have no way to prevent it. So the South would never become a world power; they probably would be a southern version of Canada.

[Don_t_Call_Me_Shirley]

The Confederacy’s problem, however, is that in peacetime, each states proclaims itself a sovereign entity. It has and can have no unifying political force: its entire raison d’etre is against it. The central government doesn’t have any power to compel any state to do anything (and I just don’t see, say, Texas, going along with Richmond out of loyalty).

I’ve often wondered what the Confederate government would have done if a state had tried to secede. It seems like it would be rather difficult for them to come up with a rational reason to stop it.

And once states are seceding from the CSA, why can’t a county secede from a state? (Had the war ended without a Union victory this question would have been answered very quickly, depending on Virginia’s willingness to fight to keep West Virginia as part of the state.) And once the county has seceded from the state, what’s to stop a city from seceding from the county?

[i_am_a_scientist]

[QUOTE=Musicat]
The movie Confederate States of America postulates what might have happened if the Confederacy had won the Civil War. Fascinating to watch, it includes faux-commercials and TV shows that might have been made in this century.

According to their scenario, Lincoln tried to escape in blackface to Canada using Harriet Tubman’s underground railroad, NYC is sacked by Lee’s army, and CSA embarks on a continental conquest of South America. While some of this seems fanciful and farfetched, there really was a proposal of this kind by the Confederates in the heyday of the war.
[/QUOTE]

This premise would be a cool idea in the hands of a capable filmmaker/producer - too bad Spike Lee is about as subtle as a fisting party with the Denver Nuggets.

This is a slight hijack, and for that I apologize.

/hijack

[Khangol]

Winston Churchill gave a summary of how things might, in his opinion, have gone, in his 1930 essay “If Lee Had Not Won The Battle Of Gettysburg”. It can be found in The Great Republic, a book collecting much of what he wrote about America.

(Yes, the title of the essay is a bit jarring: Churchill was writing at a time when “alternative histories” were relatively popular, and he turned the concept on its head by writing as if the alternative were reality, and then speculating about what might have happened if the Union had defeated the Confederacy.)

[Sailboat]

[QUOTE=astorian]
There was never the slightest chance that the South could conquer the North.
[/QUOTE]

I think it was Shelby Foote who wrote that Lincoln fought the entire war with one arm behind his back. Not in the sense of being restrained against his will, but in the sense of not leveraging the utmost power he could have brought to bear. Foote went on to say that had the South’s invasions had more success, Lincoln would have just brought out the other arm and still won.

Sailboat

[zev_steinhardt]

[QUOTE=Don’t Call Me Shirley]

And once states are seceding from the CSA, why can’t a county secede from a state? (Had the war ended without a Union victory this question would have been answered very quickly, depending on Virginia’s willingness to fight to keep West Virginia as part of the state.) And once the county has seceded from the state, what’s to stop a city from seceding from the county?
[/QUOTE]

While I agree with you that it would have been hard for the CSA to rationally deny a state the right to secede from the CSA, it would not have been too hard to rationally deny a county the right to secede from the state. The reason for that is, very simply, that a state (at the time) was viewed as a soverign entity that was only a part of the Union because it wanted to be. A county, OTOH, is not a soverign entity, but an integral part of the state.

Zev Steinhardt

[ralph124c]

[QUOTE=Sailboat]
I think it was Shelby Foote who wrote that Lincoln fought the entire war with one arm behind his back. Not in the sense of being restrained against his will, but in the sense of not leveraging the utmost power he could have brought to bear. Foote went on to say that had the South’s invasions had more success, Lincoln would have just brought out the other arm and still won.

Sailboat
[/QUOTE]

I agree-the South could never have sent an army to take NYC..that level of effort was beyond them. But i have always wondered if the South could have gotten the North to stop the war. By 1864, the North was dependent upon immigrants to fill the army ranks-what if the irish and german immigrants simply refused to fight! the draft riots in NYC-if riots like these broke out in every Northern city, the Lincoln government may well have had to cease the war effort.

[Colibri]

[QUOTE=Musicat]
Expansion west and south didn’t have a “natural” stopping place as Mexico’s boundaries were much less distinct than now. The movie’s writers claim there was talk of further expansion before the Civil War, although I haven’t tried to verify this. I don’t find it hard to believe. Think Gadsden Purchase and Texas.

[/QUOTE]

There were a number of efforts by US “filibusterers” trying to take over countries in Central America before the Civil War, mostly Southerners seeking to expand the territories available for slavery. The most notable of these was William Walker, who briefly took over both Baja California and Nicaragua at different times.

William Walker convinced many Southerners of the desirability of creating a slave-holding empire in tropical Latin America. In 1861, when U.S. Senator John J. Crittenden proposed that the 36°30’ parallel north be declared as a line of demarcation between free and slave territories, Abraham Lincoln, of the anti-slavery Republican Party, denounced such an arrangement, saying that it “would amount to a perpetual covenant of war against every people, tribe, and State owning a foot of land between here and Tierra del Fuego.”

Before the end of the American Civil War, Walker enjoyed great popularity in the southern and western United States, where he was known as “General Walker” and as the “grey-eyed man of destiny.”

There is a certain degree of plausibility of a Confederate States of America embarking on conquests to the south, if they had had the resources to do so (which they probably would not).

[QUOTE=Khangol]
Winston Churchill gave a summary of how things might, in his opinion, have gone, in his 1930 essay “If Lee Had Not Won The Battle Of Gettysburg”. It can be found in The Great Republic, a book collecting much of what he wrote about America.
[/QUOTE]

The novelist MacKinley Cantor wrote a short novel called “If the South had Won the Civil War” for the Civil War centennial from the perspective of a victorious South looking back on its history in 1961.

Among the elements in Cantor’s version:

• The South won due to taking the day at Gettysburg, together with Grant’s death in an equestrian accident at Vicksburg.

• Delaware and eastern Maryland secede to join the Confederacy; the North retains western Maryland and Virginia. Washington DC, surrounded by the Confederacy, is also ceded to the CSA, while the North builds a new centrally-located capital in the western US.

• Texas shortly afterward secedes from the CSA to form its own republic.

• Increasingly isolated diplomatically, the CSA finally abolishes slavery in the 1880s.

• Cuba and Puerto Rico annexed by the CSA following the Spanish-Confederate War.

• The great security concern in during the Cold War in 1961 is the presence of a Soviet bastion in Alaska, which the US was never able to purchase from Russia.

• In the face of the Communist menace, the USA, CSA and Republic of Texas have initiated discussions to re-unite.

[Freddy_the_Pig]

[QUOTE=Musicat]
The movie’s writers claim there was talk of further expansion before the Civil War, although I haven’t tried to verify this.
[/QUOTE]
You’re darn tootin’ there was. Democratic Party platforms routinely called for the annexation of Cuba during the 1850’s. The filibusters have been mentioned. Many Americans were outraged that we annexed so little of Mexico via the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; we went back for another bite via the Gadsden Purchase and might have returned to the well had other matters not intervened.

At the time of secession, some Americans in both sections argued that the two nations (USA/CSA) could live in peace because the CSA would have a natural sphere of expansion toward the South. The western territories weren’t altogether suitable for slavery anyhow, so the argument went, and Southerners would do better to abandon the endless fight over Kansas and New Mexico and look south for more inviting targets.

These expectations weren’t entirely realisitic. We probably could have absorbed then-sparsely-populated northern Mexico as easily as we absorbed California. But conquering and absorbing a densely populated, Spanish-speaking region such as Cuba, central America, or central Mexico would have been another matter altogether.

But, these expectations were current at the time.

[BJMoose]

I think we’re short-selling the South some. While their industry paled in comparison with the north, they did have sufficient capacity to wage war for four years. A peacetime CSA would likely develop a manufacturing economy somewhere between those of Mexico and the USA.

The cotton economy would surely have bounced back some over time (which may not be saying much, since by the end of the war they were selling virtually no cotton). To the extent that cotton culture waned, other crops would have been tried and something productive found. (In this respect I think of my own Kansas. In the early days corn was the common crop, but the arrival of Russian Winter Red wheat with the Mennonites rapidly turned Kansas into The Wheat State.)

The wild card would have been the slave population. Things would have gotten real messy in areas where slaves might achieve the critical mass necessary to overthrow their masters. (I think very few slaves would have been allowed to escape to the North. Northerners may have been inclined to despise slavery, but very few wanted blacks around.)

[Captain_Carrot]

Sort of on this topic, why are there no alternate histories that portray a more positive outcome to the Civil War? I’ve read quite a few of them, and only one has even had the North win (though it compensated for that by having Lincoln assassinated during the war and Hamlin assuming the Presidency, taking a much harsher line against the defeated South and sowing the seeds for decades of rebellion and terrorism); why can’t the North have a better victory? I’d personally quite like to read about a War where Lee fought for the Union, or maybe Lincoln wasn’t assassinated (though that deals more with the aftermath).

[Lumpy]

[QUOTE=Captain Carrot]
Sort of on this topic, why are there no alternate histories that portray a more positive outcome to the Civil War? I’ve read quite a few of them, and only one has even had the North win (though it compensated for that by having Lincoln assassinated during the war and Hamlin assuming the Presidency, taking a much harsher line against the defeated South and sowing the seeds for decades of rebellion and terrorism); why can’t the North have a better victory? I’d personally quite like to read about a War where Lee fought for the Union, or maybe Lincoln wasn’t assassinated (though that deals more with the aftermath).
[/QUOTE]
Not the war itself, but I can see an alternate Reconstruction in which Grant took Lincoln up on the offer to attend that play. Grant saves Lincoln from being shot by Booth at the cost of his own life. Lincoln dies of natural causes two years later, but Reconstruction is handled better; particularly, the deadlock between the Radical Republican congress and the reactionary Andrew Johnson is avoided.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

[QUOTE=Captain Carrot]
Sort of on this topic, why are there no alternate histories that portray a more positive outcome to the Civil War? I’ve read quite a few of them, and only one has even had the North win (though it compensated for that by having Lincoln assassinated during the war and Hamlin assuming the Presidency, taking a much harsher line against the defeated South and sowing the seeds for decades of rebellion and terrorism); why can’t the North have a better victory? I’d personally quite like to read about a War where Lee fought for the Union, or maybe Lincoln wasn’t assassinated (though that deals more with the aftermath).
[/QUOTE]

I’ve also read the short story where Lincoln is killed during the 1864 Confederate attack on Ft. Stevens in Washington (the battle in which, supposedly, the young Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. shouted at Lincoln, whom he didn’t recognize, “Get down, you damned fool!”). Hamlin becomes President and things unfold as you describe. I forget the name of that story, though.

Peter Tsouras, maven of alternate history, wrote an alternative Gettysburg book in which Meade is badly injured by the Confederate artillery barrage just before Pickett’s Charge. Command of the Army of the Potomac passes to Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, who very aggressively pursues the Rebs after Pickett’s Charge and sweeps the field. Lee is captured a day or two later, as the shattered Confederate army streams south. Coming on the heels of the surrender of Vicksburg, that virtually ends the war, and Hancock is elected President in 1868, after Lincoln serves a complete second term.

In the first “What If?” book, ed. by Robert Cowley (Berkley 2000), Pulitizer Prize-winning historian James McPherson spins several scenarios of alternative Union victories, one of which has Hooker doing much better at Chancellorsville, keeping his nerve and adroitly exploiting Lee’s division of his army. Another has McClellan making much better use of Lee’s lost order and smashing the Rebs at Antietam. In both scenarios, the war ends sooner and Lincoln is able to do much better in managing Reconstruction, IIRC.

I don’t know of a story in which Lee accepts Lincoln’s offer to lead the Union Army, but it certainly has potential, and I wouldn’t be surprised if someone’s already written it. I did read a short story in which the American Revolution fails, and Sir Robert later leads British (Southern American) troops during the Crimean War (!) with J.E.B. Stuart as his aide-de-camp. Pretty freaky.

Yes, I’m a sucker for alternative histories (if they’re done well).

[BrainGlutton]

[QUOTE=xtisme]
Harry Turtledoves The Great War series explores this very question. If you are interested in his take, I highly recommend the series (though I haven’t picked up the latest book dealing with the North/South continuing war set in WWII yet). Its very good and has a lot of detail.

-XT
[/QUOTE]

Best AH treatment of the concept to date! (Except for the part about Jake Featherston becoming a successful alternate-Hitler national-fascist figure, in a country dedicated from the start to the principle of decentralization of government. He should’ve thought a lot harder about that part. Besides, Hitler was an artist and something of a confused autodidact intellectual, while Featherston is no artist or intellectual by even the broadest possible definition of either – rather a pallid sorry-ass effort, IMO.)

[Menocchio]

[QUOTE=Captain Carrot]
Sort of on this topic, why are there no alternate histories that portray a more positive outcome to the Civil War? I’ve read quite a few of them, and only one has even had the North win (though it compensated for that by having Lincoln assassinated during the war and Hamlin assuming the Presidency, taking a much harsher line against the defeated South and sowing the seeds for decades of rebellion and terrorism); why can’t the North have a better victory? I’d personally quite like to read about a War where Lee fought for the Union, or maybe Lincoln wasn’t assassinated (though that deals more with the aftermath).
[/QUOTE]

Harry Harrison’s Stars and Stripes trilogy has the British Empire declare war on the Union following an international incident (in reality, cooler heads prevailed, in the novels Prince Albert dropped dead upon learning of it, and Vickie blamed the US). Because they’re idiots, the Brits attack/rape/pillage the CSA by accident. The USA and CSA join hands to repel the invaders, and John Stuart Mill turns up to make all their problems magically disappear, because he’s a philosopher.

In the second novel, they liberate Ireland.

In the third novel, the invade England and overthrow the monarchy.

It’s hilarious.

[Governor_Quinn]

[QUOTE=Elendil’s Heir]

In the first “What If?” book, ed. by Robert Cowley (Berkley 2000), Pulitizer Prize-winning historian James McPherson spins several scenarios of alternative Union victories, one of which has Hooker doing much better at Chancellorsville, keeping his nerve and adroitly exploiting Lee’s division of his army. Another has McClellan making much better use of Lee’s lost order and smashing the Rebs at Antietam. In both scenarios, the war ends sooner and Lincoln is able to do much better in managing Reconstruction, IIRC.

[/QUOTE]

A correction:

McPherson only contributed one scenario involving the Civil War, and it was one in which Lee manages to avoid the Lost Order getting lost, resulting in a massive victory at Gettysburg in 1862. The Hooker essay and a few others (one of which, I recall, involves the Union winning the war after winning what in our timeline is the first battle of Manassas/Bull Run) were contributes by Stephen W. Sears.

[Captain_Amazing]

[QUOTE=Don’t Call Me Shirley]
I’ve often wondered what the Confederate government would have done if a state had tried to secede. It seems like it would be rather difficult for them to come up with a rational reason to stop it.
[/QUOTE]

It’s not likely they would have allowed it. During the war, the Confederacy was adamantly opposed of the attempts by state governments (specifically Georgia and North Carolina) to expand state sovereignty. For an article regarding Confederate hypocrisy on the issue, check out the Feb. 20, 1864’s Harper’s Weekly…the essay “A Rule that Works One Way Only”

It was the argument of the rebels for secession, and of their Northern allies for letting them go. In the South it declared that the Constitution was a treaty among equal sovereign States, and that any one might withdraw at its option. In the North it asserted that the national Government had no right “to coerce States,” and could not prevent its own destruction. In both it did the work it was designed to do—it connived at the helpless ruin of the Government.

But of our pleasant vices the gods make whips to scourge us. State sovereignty was an admirable doctrine for the purpose of destroying the Union; but when it threatens the Confederacy its own friends howl. Sauce for the goose, it seems, is not sauce for the gander. North Carolina, according to the State-rights doctors, had a perfect right to secede from the Union; but to mention secession from the Confederacy is in their opinion infamy itself. The Wilmington Journal, one of the most virulent State-rights papers, exclaims: “The man who would strike down the Confederacy, while at the same time professing extravagant and exclusive veneration for and devotion to North Carolina, deceives, and deceives for a purpose. The thing ought to mark its own reprobation, and this reprobation ought farther to be stamped so plainly by public opinion that the hypocritical cant would for very shame’s sake—if shame be left with such men—be silenced forever.”

[Captain_Amazing]

[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
(Except for the part about Jake Featherston becoming a successful alternate-Hitler national-fascist figure, in a country dedicated from the start to the principle of decentralization of government.
[/QUOTE]

That whole principle was sort of a red herring.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

[QUOTE=Governor Quinn]
A correction:

McPherson only contributed one scenario involving the Civil War, and it was one in which Lee manages to avoid the Lost Order getting lost, resulting in a massive victory at Gettysburg in 1862. The Hooker essay and a few others (one of which, I recall, involves the Union winning the war after winning what in our timeline is the first battle of Manassas/Bull Run) were contributes by Stephen W. Sears.
[/QUOTE]

Thanks. I got the publishing info from Amazon, but couldn’t find my copy of the book here at home and was going by my (obviously faulty, in this case) memory.