What if the South won the Civil War?

The North would have prospered without the South dragging us down. Democrats wouldn't have dumbed down their message to get conservative southerners votes as they did in the nineties .The North and West would have universal health care and free college and the US would be much more progressive. The South would have been a third world country and blacks would emigrate North leaving the whites without a labor force to exploit.

 

The CSA just fought war for independence, for self-rule.
Why would they even consider falling back under the crown?

 

If Lee had won at Gettysburg he would have marched his army using Jackson's (We are working under the assumption that he survived.) "foot cavalry" directly to DC. I think the town would have evacuated and Lincoln too. With Lee in control of DC I think the War would have ended. Victoria would have recognized the South. Slavery would have survived. Maryland would have joined the Confederacy along with Tennessee, Missouri and maybe Kansas. There would have been little question which side the border states would have joined.

 

With a victorious Confederacy the South would have boomed. The Mississippi would have been opened up and trade up and down it would have thrived. Southern culture would have become all the rage. Paris fashions would have featured gray. Their restaurants would have served fried chicken and hush puppies. The Virginia Reel would have been a popular dance and everyone would have been humming "Dixie". It would have become popular to hire black servants, but they would not be slaves. The entire slave issue would be a stickler. I suspect the Southerners would have shared their victory with their black "servants" (They never called slaves - slaves, they were "servants" or "field hands".) Maybe more would have been freed. Maybe all of them would have been freed as a kind of reward for working throughout the War.

It would have been interesting as we study the new ending, which would now be the real ending, of the Civil War today. Maybe the Yankees would be considered the "Villains" since it was they who invaded the South. They sort of "started it". Black Americans would see the Confederates as rewarding their labors with their freedom and maybe the racial divide we experience would not be a deep as it is today. Would the two nations have reunified? Who knows, but it might be under the "Stars and Bars" and not under "Old Glory".

 

Isn't Canada independent? They gained the status they have today in the 1860's. And Australia is independent too. Having a titular monarch isn't meaningless but it's not really that important either.

There were a lot of Southerners who looked upon help from GB as a given, because the British mills needed King Cotton (didn't work out though, just promoted the Egyptian market) There was a big faction in Old Blighty that wanted to help the Confederates. (Remember that British Observer in The Killer Angels ? he was real.) Many of the Southron Planter class saw themselves as having far more in common with your British Earls than any American and you can make a good case even today for unifying GB and the USA, (though GB would be far the junior partner now).

As I said, the Brits were looking to help the Confederacy and I can't see the Southrons tuning them down, as it would practically guarantee victory. The sticking point was slavery, and I just outlined a way that might become the unifying factor rather than a point of contention.

 

Nowhere here is there a meaningful answer to my question.
Thanks.

 

We crossposted. Read the rest of my reply before.

 

Yes... all of this is an argument as to why the CSA would want help form the UK in the war against the US
Nothing supports the idea they would accept the crown as their head of state.

 

Sounds interesting.

Brainstorming this notion gives a two-nation configuration for the former USA which would then join Canada and Mexico as the four major occupants of North America.

As separate sovereign nations, the North and the South would have been completely independent and then the Fugitive Slave Act which was part of the cause of the U.S. Civil War according to General/President U.S. Grant would have been void, and as such there would have been an exodus of slaves fleeing the South for the North.

This could have caused yet another subsequent war between the North and the South, only this time instigated by the South whereas the first (actual) Civil War had been instigated by the North by invading the South.

So had the South "won" the actual Civil War, there would likely have been more war to follow.

It is thus fortunate that the North won, thanks mostly to Grant and to Generals Meade and Buford. They won their respective battles on practically the same day around July 4th in 1863 at both Gettysburg and Vicksburg.

 

You should stop posing loaded rhetorical questions.

Instead you should research when Canada gain its independence, state it, and then cite your references.

 

Lee would have had D.C. surrounded. There would have been no escape.

Lee's instructions from Davis were to present a letter to Lincoln offering terms of surrender for the North from the South.

 

You need to get an avatar to go with your moniker.

 

LOL. God knows we've become accustomed to alternative facts.

 

1867 and my gf just told me. She's Quebecois, you want her to sing O Canada or say something in really strange French? I used a rhetorical question because it conveyed my meaning clearly in 3 words. Thank you anyway, though, I will take your advice to heart and hereby award you the status of "pointy-bearded perfessor"

 

Only azzholes and females use rhetorical questions.

They are a fallacy of sophistry.

Give it up and debate like a gentleman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies

 

Perfess

When Adam delved and Eve span who then was the gentleman?

 

Moses made up this myth to start his fictional narrative called Bereshet (in Greek, Genesis).

Don't get too wound up about it. It's just a story about a young lady and a lad and his snake and her taste buds.

 

For me personally, it might mean I would be rich today, given both sides of my family tree lost their big plantations and land, plus slaves after the defeat of the South. They lost it to those damned to hell Yankee con men and carpet baggers for property taxes given what gold we had hidden was dug up by the Yankee armies, as they looted us to the bone, spoils of war. So my ancestors had to start over, no longer big land owners and cotton farmers, penniless and poor. And like the freed slaves went to work sharecropping, sharing the same life of poverty as the newly freed slaves who were exploited, just as the poor whites were, by land owners. Yankee land owners. It took a generation or more for my ancestors to claw their way back to owning decent sized cotton farms, but only hundreds of acres instead of thousands. So for my ancestors, the South winning would have saved their property and social position, instead of taking it away. And I would probably be wealthy today, thanks to their money and what big money can buy in DC.

 

And how they were all very happy until God got involved.

 

Or your ancestors could have died screaming in the inevitable slave's revolt, and you wouldn't exist.

This is another factor that most of the South Winning the War scenarios overlook. The South had seen slave revolts before, though none were really widespread. The North was arming and deploying former slaves as troops from 1863, and I believe it was Lee himself who suggested the South arm some freed blacks in 1864. Would people who had been told a whole war had just been fought for their freedom and seen others of their race free soldiers on their behalf still be a submissive force of millions?
.

 

In my opinion, the South had to be destroyed to destroy the culture, literally destroyed. Burn it down as happened.

It was tragic President Lincoln was assassinated as the post war carpet bagger era was a disaster and largely responsible for the massive backlash against blacks.
All that said, this does not change the heroism of Confederate soldiers - most who did not own slaves - answered the call of their new country the same as American revolutionaries answered the call of their new country breaking free of the British.

The South's military fought very honorably, which the North came not to so.

I suspect anyone who served in the military understands that the military does not make policy and may not even agree with the war. Rather, a soldier does his duty honorably, with best skill giving all the soldier has, and with courage. Thus, often in warfare the actual soldiers fighting could have respect for each other. After the war, much of the North HIGHLY respected General Lee and the soldiers of the Confederacy.

THIS is why it is the Confederate BATTLE flag of the military, not the national flag. This was the Confederacy's national flag:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags...Confederate_States_of_America_(1861-1863).svg

I've never seen anyone fly it.

The MILITARY statues of the Confederacy should stay. Removing statues of Jefferson Davis should not as he is the Saddam Hussein statue so to speak, plus he was not honorable in the end wanting to employ biological weapons, engage in insurgency terrorism and have Lincoln assassinated. Robert E Lee was notably honorable by every measure. Even in the end he surrendered - when not having to - to end the war and prevent it becoming an insurgency war. He never supported the war to begin with. He just did his duty to his state and the nation his state had joined.

 

Not to mention that they never had any intent to conquer the north. No intent to spread slavery to the North. Even if they had the ability.

 

Intentions change very, very quickly. Most Americans had no intent to become independent. The United States (probably) never intended to invade Europe for the purpose of counterbalancing the Soviets, they just wanted to beat the Germans.

But, there they were.

But I do agree that it's unlikely the South would have conquered the North, both because they weren't very inclined in that direction and because it's harder to invade the North than to defend the South.

 

We have to be careful not to assume that "victory" and "defeat" are binary. A defeat at Gettysburg with casualties weighted 10-20,000 in the other direction would still leave an army perfectly capable of challenging the Confederates in their march North.

As the North learned, it takes repeated victories on enemy territory for ground to be held. Further, it was politically impossible for the British to aid the Confederates following the Emancipation Proclamation.

 

Well the dirty little secret of Judaism is that all of the Israelites who Moses brought out of Egypt died in the desert during their 40 year sojourn. If they had known that was going to happen then they would have never left Egypt with Moses to begin with.

God plays games, yes.