What if the South won the Civil War?

What if the South won the Civil War?

HBO's plans to do a television series slated for 2019 called "Confederate," led by producers David Benioff and D.B Weiss, the creators of the very popular "Game of Thrones." The premise of their show is an alternative history in which the Confederacy actually wins the Civil War. It is set in present day.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/11/opinions/black-america-confederate-rebel-zombie-sims-opinion/?iid=ob_homepage_deskrecommended_pool

[Its hard to imagine a television series about present day America where slavery is nation wide because the South won the Civil war. Why would anyone bring about the anger that would be sure to follow from black Americans confronted with such an idea? The Confederate flag flying over the White House alone would bring protests and violence. It's a crazy idea and I hope these people come to their senses. What do you think.]

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"libido sciendi"..... the passion to know.

 

An author named Harry Turtledove (yes, that is his name) wrote a series of novels where the south won starting with "Guns of the South". Fiction, but a fun read, and also the follow on books.

 

In the fifties a book entitled "If the South Had Won the Civil War" was published and it was popular. I read it. I recall what it said. (Long memory, huh). In summary, it said that slavery would end by itself in a few decades. It didn't work that well anyway, and free people make better workers and they take care of themselves. Free workers are happier and more efficient than are slaves. The book when on to say that the nation would be weaker when cut in two and that when WWI broke out we would reunify because we are a more steadfast manufacturing inity when we are one nation and we would therefore reunify for safety and efficiency. The book is just as valid as it was when written. I'm sure one can find a copy.

People forget that the abolitionist movement was popular in the South until the 1830's or so, or when the anti-South public opinion came into being after the publication of "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Slavery just isn't a very good system and it was doomed. The reason that it was sustained in the South was because so many wealthy landowners had so much money tied up in slaves. The lion's share of their cash was in human property, so they couldn't afford to free the slaves and therefore go broke. These wealthy slave owners became the people who ran the government. This did not happen until King Cotton happened, due in large part to the cotton cleaning machine and the industrial revolution in Britain. Before King Cotton, plantations, often owned by Englishmen went broke all of the time because there just wasn't that much profit in hemp, rice and tobacco to sustain a plantation. After cotton happened there were 151 millionaires living in Mississippi and along the river. Then things changed. Southerners were, however; often embarrassed by slavery. They knew it was immoral, and they made up all kinds of fake excuses for it. They figured that they had no choice but to keep the institution. Thomas Jefferson is an excellent example and I suppose Washington too. So many slaves were freed by their dying owners that the practice of deathbed manumission was made illegal in the South.

 

Could be a fun thing to watch. People like alternative history.

 

Yes they do but this could be very inflammatory.

 

With all of the racial unrest in the country it might be a good idea to put this TV show aside for a while.

 

I don't plan on watching it but people are free to more or less make what ever they want TV show/Movie/Video game wise even if some people are angry.

 

People need to get over their sensitivity and grow up.

I love alternative history and many stories have been written about alternate outcomes of the civil war or many other events.

It is not inflammatory people are just whiny *******

 

If the South had managed to preserve the Confederacy, England would have had
a best buddy on the doorstep.
Cotton then was like oil today. A hot commodity.
And England would have out bid Yankee factories.

Slavery would have disappeared and replaced with the Yankee factory worker model.
Pay for work. Can't work, no pay. Rent housing, deducted from pay.
Sell needs at the "company store".
It certainly would be cheaper than having to keep your slave healthy.

Moi

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It is not a crazy idea it is just good entertainment, perhaps even thought provoking if done right.

Alternative history stories have been around for a long time and some are very good ( others not so much ).

Harry turtledove is an author who is recognized as one of the leading writers of alternative history but I find him over rated and not very imaginative. A better one is Robert Conroy or Harry Harrison.

Few such stories have been carried into movie form for various reasons such as the cost of creating an entirely different world in the form of movie sets. Some which have been tried are Fatherland by Robert Harris which is about the Nazis winning WWII . The movie version stared Rutger Howard but it was a flop. Of course the big one out now is "The Man in the High Castle" which is also about the US losing WWII. It is now a mini series on Amazon. Personally I think it is a bit of a disappointment.

I personally am hoping that this is a trend where some of the better stories of alternate history can be adapted for TV or movies. If they are good I will watch them. If not I won't.

If some other overly sensitive baby wants to object then they can just do the same thing and not watch it.

Racism is always bad and unacceptable but in fact many people are correct that PC and SJWs are going to far trying to tear down confederate monuments and painting all white people and their history as evil or brutal.

This proposed TV show may end up being a dud or be very good but it is up to any potential viewer to decide not some butt hurt liberal revisionist who hates all things confederate. They can just grow up and watch the Kardassians or whatever.

BTW if it triggers some ******* to see the confederate flag flying over the WH then they do not need to look at this.

https://www.sfsite.com/~silverag/american.jpg

Ok it's the capital building not the white house. Nevertheless it is just a book cover from a fictional story and if that drives you to violence then you are one mentally ill fool.

 

England would have had a problem with slavery in the Confederacy. It had been illegal for over half a century in Britain and they would have required that the South end it. However the trade in cotton actually prospered by the application of slave labor which was unique. So the relationship between the South and Britain would have been difficult. The Yankees would have been a problem for both the Brits and the South. One wonders if the Yankees would have supported Germany in WWI. Would it have become the Confederates with the French and British against the Germans, Americans and Austria? Maybe Italy too? Which side would have fought the Russians? Probably the German's and us along with the Austrians and Italians. We, of course would re-start fighting between the Yankees and Confederates, but much more of the fight would have been in the West. The country would be divided along the Mississippi.

Wars and rumors of war. War is the natural way of mankind and left alone people will fight. Pease is an aberation.

 

Interesting question. I don't think the South could have conquered and held the North, even with the significant population of Northern Democrats backing them.

But they certainly could have become independent, and even taken other slave states with them. The British would've had every reason to foster close ties with this new country. The really interesting question would relate to Mexico and France. The end of the American Civil War allowed Americans to pressure Napoleon III to abandon his allies in Mexico, a significant part of what lead to a Republican victory in the civil war occurring in Mexico.

One could have an interesting situation where a French-allied Mexico and a British-allied Confederacy existed alongside a stunted United States. It's possible that Mexico, with French backing, could have retaken significant portions of it's lost territory, though probably not Texas.

That would put an entirely new spin on the Japanese position in the Pacific.

 

That's true, but even still their geopolitical and economic desires ran against this desire. There were times when the British were very close to at least recognizing the Confederacy, right up to Antietam.

I don't know if they would have been able to. The movement west would've been stunted by British and Mexican interference, keeping the US from becoming the giant it did.

But maybe. Even the North alone without territory past the 100th Meridian would be a force to be reckoned with.

 

Consider for a moment if Jackson had survived his amputated arm. He would have remained the commander of his army and Ewell would have remained a subordinate commander. With Jackson in command he would have recognized the importance of Cemetery Hill and he would have taken it on day one of Gettysburg. This would have given him command of the ridge that led to little Round top and he would have placed Confederate cannon up there. He would have split the Union Army in two and Lee would have taken first the Union right at Culp's Hill and Jackson would have taken the Union left and center. He had the high ground upon which to place his artillery. It would have been the end of Mead's Army. The Confederates would have moved on Washington DC and Lincoln would have left the city. The Southerners would have occupied DC and invited the Brits to join them and they would have. Lincoln would have surrendered and Grant would have followed suit.

Sure this is fanciful, but indeed if Jackson had not been killed the South would have been a much more dangerous force on the battlefield then they became after his death.

 

EDIT: oops

Just started replying as if you meant Andrew Jackson, because I'm stupid. I went on to explain that he would be pushing 100 =P That's what I get for reading with my brain turned off.

Even with victory at Gettysburg I doubt the Confederacy could have gone on for much longer. While the Eastern theater was important for show and morale, it was really in the Western theater that the war was won.

Sherman's strategy was gruesome, but it worked.

 

There are two pertinent questions: one, could the South have won the battle of Gettysburg...answer: absolutely. Two, if the South had won G-Berg could they have taken Washington...answer: possibly. Third question is if Washington had fallen would the South have won the War? Possibly.

Victoria was concerned about supporting a nation that condoned slavery. To find out what was going on in the South she sent an officer named Major Fremantle to snoop around. He wrote a book entitled, "Three Months With the Confederate Army".....might have been "Three Months With Lee" or "Three Months with the Southern Confederacy"...I think that is it......something like that. Book is still in print. Freemantle got to the South going thru Mexico and Texas. He ended up with Lee and Longstreet at Gettysburg and produced a first hand account. It is very interesting reading. One of his tasks was to investigate how cruel slavery was. He writes about it at some length. He was sitting in a tree next to Longstreet during Pickett's Charge. Longstreet was eating a peach.

 

All it would have taken for the South to have won the Civil War would have been for Great Britain to have recognized the Confederacy. Then things would have fallen in line for the Gray. A northern border would have been fixed and Mississippi would have been reopened and DC would have become a Southern city which it essentially was anyway. The future of slavery would have been in doubt, but it might have lasted into the early 20th Century. No modern society could long tolerate something as wrong as slavery, especially when freedom is so important to our people.

 

This totally misses what happened in the Civil War. The whole civil war was the north conquering the south and the best the south was hoping for was the North just giving up. That is what the south winning meant.

If the confederacy survived, this would have made the US divided into two and weaker on a global front making it less of a power in the world wars and beyond. Slavery was dying and it is likely the South would have eventually ended it maybe in the early 21st century as manufacturing took over. The South fought the Civil rights act and without it there might be a lot more discrimination against minorities there today.

This would also affect the North because Republicans get most of the electoral votes from the South and the rest of the nation would have liberal policies more like Canada. The North would have a living wage, universal healthcare, free college, gay rights, minority rights, high taxes, etc and the South wouldn't. Some predict that if the South abolished slavery that we would eventually reunify and things would look more like today.

 

One wonders if we would have reunified. I lived in Mississippi for three years in the 60's. Southerners did not want to be Yankees and they seldom had much good to say about them. They regaled in the traits that make them diff from Yankees. They loved their accent for instance. The enjoyed their diet which is very different from that of a Yankee. It is difficult for me to believe that they tolerate the taking down of their Confederate statues, which are all over the South.

 

It must have been a hard thing for the owners, since many of the slaves in the homes were illegitimate children and grandchildren of the owners themselves... or their sons. Of course the owners would want to free them.

When Toqueville visited New Orleans at the beginning of the 19th century, he said there were balls for girls who were part white, so they could find a lover to assure their future. He said a lot of these girls were completely white.

Which takes me to the subject of native Americans... and what happened to them. I watched a video of a man who looked Scotch Irish talk about his DNA. He went into his ancestry as he knew it, and mentioned all the names of those on both sides of his family who were native Americans, and yet none of that ancestry came up in his DNA. He couldn't understand why, until he found out that the native Americans carry the same DNA as the Irish and English because they both came from the same part of Siberia.

 

Where do you get this stuff, Jeannette?

These is DNA discernment between Brits/Irish and Native Americans. Of course all humans "carry the same DNA" to an extent.

Being a Native American isn't entirely a matter of genetics. I could become a member of the Cherokee despite being 90% German and <1% "Native American" according to genetic testing. This is because my great-grandfather WAS a Cherokee, just a Cherokee with mostly Western-European genetic and phenotypic markers.

 

The people in the Southern States couldn't accept Blacks as human beings because if they did, they would have to abolish slavery. So the majority of blacks weren't edified and continued with whatever they brought over from Africa... like voodoo and witchcraft, which of course didn't bode well for many of the owners.

As for Victoria, maybe she should have been paying more attention to how the Irish Catholics under her were being treated, and not the blacks in the US... who never had it as bad by their own account, as the blacks under the British in the Caribbean.

 

The reason I mentioned it, is because I'm getting a little fed up with people saying that the US committed genocide, when the natives didn't have any immunity to the measles, so many died. Others like the Cherokees assimilated into the prevalent culture. The ones who couldn't were given their own nations so they could maintain their own traditions and laws.

As for the guy in the video, I think it has something to do with the marker they used... or at least that is what I gathered from what he said. Look I'm just repeating him. I also read once that some explorers got lost and hooked up with the Cherokees centuries ago, so they do have European blood.

Another interesting thing I read is that 4% of the Swedish DNA is the same as the Native Americans. They couldn't understand why, and then decided it had to do with the Slavs, and that the Native Americans probably mixed with them in Siberia before they crossed the Bering strait.

 

Actually guns of the south was a stand alone novel.

It was a mix of alternate history and science fiction. The plot was a group of south african Apartheid supporters steal a time machine and travel back in time to provide AK47s and other modern equipment to the confederacy to help defeat the union. The premise being that with another racist government ( the CSA ) on their side in the 20th century apartheid would have a chance of enduring.

The long series he wrote started with " How Few Remain " In this alternative history the CSA won the battle of Antietam simply because the famous lost order was found and recovered by CSA troops which then led to Lee defeating Mcclellan once again. In reality the lost order was discovered by a union patrol and passed up the chain allowing Mcclellan to see Lee's plan and inflict Lee's first major defeat.

That book was followed by" American front" which was a series about WWI between the CSA and USA. Then "American Empire" which developed the years between the world wars and finally " Return Engagement" about WWII between the CSA and USA.

I must admit Turtledove did a terrific job imagining and developing an entire fictional world where history unraveled in a different way. But I really do not like his style of writing or his overt sympathies with communism.

That is why I prefer the" Stars and stripes " series by Harry Harrison which is not about the south winning but instead about an alternative outcome where England declares war on the USA but through a navigational screw up launches an attack on the confeceracy which leads to the USA and CSA forging a temporary truce to fight the british and ultimately reuniting the nation under peaceful terms. But then they have to fight another war against the brits.

Some other very good stories are from Robert Conroy who recently passed away. Like Harrison he does not write about the Germans or Japs or confederacy winning the wars against the USA but he does explore how things may have gone differently albeit with the US still winning at the end. Such as if a third wave were launched at Pearl Harbor destroying the fuel reserves and repair docks which would have been an even GREATER disaster for the US.

Either way I love alternate history and I hope this series gets produced.

 

That's correct. To begin, North America wasn't as densely populated as people like to pretend. The tremendous amount of death that came to the Native Americans was mostly through disease, not intentionally.

This isn't to pretend that the Americans were just nice guys who wanted to get along. They weren't, and neither were the Native Americans. They were all humans with human tendencies. Some horrible, horrible atrocities were committed by both sides, but the worst came to be perpetrated by the US Army. This wasn't because the army was more bloodthirsty than the natives, just more unified and capable.

Well, Andrew Jackson put an end to all that.

...as long as they weren't in the valuable parts of the country.

Some European blood. Of course.

The Slavs were never in Sweden, and weren't in Siberia until the 18th century.