What if the South won the Civil War?

Discussion in 'Latest US & World News' started by Noserose, Aug 12, 2017.

  1. CourtJester

    CourtJester Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Apr 1, 2013
    Messages:
    27,769
    Likes Received:
    4,921
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Nah, now is the time to cash in on cheap sensationalism. But who know maybe this could be a first, an actual intelligent show from HBO. Just kidding, ain't going to happen.
     
  2. Jeannette

    Jeannette Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jul 12, 2012
    Messages:
    37,994
    Likes Received:
    7,948
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Female
    That would mean the native Americans originated in Europe and then crossed Siberia and the Far East to get to America. I don't think so. The Slavs were not in Europe as far as I know until the sixth century... or at least the southern Slavs weren't according to the Emperor Justinian's historian. Anyway history is changing fast, now they're saying that the different European languages are not all derived from the same language. Interesting stuff huh!
     
  3. Concord

    Concord Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 20, 2013
    Messages:
    3,856
    Likes Received:
    876
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male


    No it wouldn't. Most evidence suggests that the ancestors of non-African descent groups came from a single band of humans that left Africa together. "Native Americans" as a separate group of humans probably weren't a single wave, and probably never set foot in Europe.

    Pre-Colombian Native Americans were no more related to Europeans than the Japanese.

    It's important to separate genetic ancestry from linguistic ancestry. The first separation of the Baltic and Slavic languages from Indo-European probably happened along the Baltic coast. As to what extent these "Slavic" groups mixed with other groups is unknown. For example, Bolghars were Turkic peoples who started speaking Slavic languages.

    Reality isn't as simple as our language games here make it out to be.
     
    Last edited: Aug 13, 2017
  4. Moi621

    Moi621 Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jul 13, 2013
    Messages:
    19,292
    Likes Received:
    7,606
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Consider the Altaic Language group. Sometime in the way back times the Earth dried up and peoples moved more circumpolar and to the great river places.
    Although Swedish is not an Altaic language, Finn is.
    I figure proto Altaic was a language of trade because it would have encompassed such diversity.
    From Japan & Korea, Mongolian & Turkic languages, Siberians to Finland.
    The Altaic language group.
    A chance for some sharing of DNA. And somehow some fragments must have been advantageous to hang on today. Similar to a Neanderthal immunity gene some of us hybrids have today yet so little Neanderthal genome.

    <ta da>

    Oh, and btw, :blowkiss: in some slave states a Black person could be free.
    A land owner and even a slave owner!
     
    Last edited: Aug 13, 2017
  5. Tim15856

    Tim15856 Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2016
    Messages:
    7,792
    Likes Received:
    4,229
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    To be fair, I've read several accounts that said blankets exposed to small pox were given to them in order to infect them. With no natural resistance, they died in droves.
    http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/smallpox1.html
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2017
    Sallyally likes this.
  6. Pollycy

    Pollycy Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 24, 2008
    Messages:
    29,922
    Likes Received:
    14,183
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    I vaguely remember this book which came out in the early 1960's, mostly because the 100th anniversary of the start of the Civil War was coming up.

    Evolving agricultural technologies would have made slavery completely obsolete by 1900. That, and all the other dynamics of westward expansion and other technologies in electricity, communication, etc., would have seen a reunification by about the time of World War I. In short, there never should have been an armed conflict between North and South -- more accurately, brutal suppression of states' rights by a tyrannical, anti-constitutional, all-powerful federal government in Washington D. C.

    Lincoln forever destroyed the very meaning of States' Rights plainly written into the Constitution of the United States. The whole whipped-up drama about slavery being the focal point of the Civil War is hogwash! Lincoln himself didn't even get around to emancipating the slaves, or even making it an issue of importance until almost two years after the Civil War began! No, Lincoln and his klatsch of power-brokers were intent on breaking the backs of sovereign states, making them bow down to an all-powerful federal government.

    Read the Constitution itself if you doubt it.... The functions and limitations on each Government Branch are clearly described, and everything (EVERYTHING) else was left to the individual, sovereign states:

    Amendment X
    The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2017
    Labouroflove and Moi621 like this.
  7. stepmac

    stepmac Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 28, 2017
    Messages:
    156
    Likes Received:
    36
    Trophy Points:
    28
    Gender:
    Male
     
  8. stepmac

    stepmac Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 28, 2017
    Messages:
    156
    Likes Received:
    36
    Trophy Points:
    28
    Gender:
    Male
    Slave ownership by Blacks was not uncommon. One must remember that when slavery was legal it was seldom questioned, certainly it was not questioned in the South. There is a story of a freed slave who decided to go into the dress-making business. She bought slaves. It was SOP in the South at that time. One must also understand that not all slave owners were cruel to their slaves. The institution itself was pretty cruel and many slaves didn't like the fact that they were enslaved. It was legendary that slaves were lazy. They were not, they were registering disapproval with the system.
     
    Moi621 likes this.
  9. stepmac

    stepmac Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 28, 2017
    Messages:
    156
    Likes Received:
    36
    Trophy Points:
    28
    Gender:
    Male
    Lincoln said that if he had to keep slavery to secure the Union he would. He also said that if he had to end slavery to secure the Union he'd do that too. Tom Lincoln, Lincoln's father kept some slaves....I think 3 and Abe hated him for it. Abe and his dad didn't get along.
     
  10. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Mar 9, 2013
    Messages:
    41,184
    Likes Received:
    16,180
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Philip K. Dicks The Man in the High Castle is, I think, still on as a series on Netflix. It's an AH where the Nazis win WWII. AH is big right now. South winning the Civil War is possibly most popular AH scenario so I'm not surprised somebody is doing this.

    Thing is that MitHC isn't just an AH story, though it is a good one and won Dick his only really big award in his career. As it was written it's a vehicle for Dick's ongoing wrestling with reality, which is really the major underlying theme of everything he ever wrote.

    ACW is sort of the poster child for a theory I have which I call the "What Were They Thinking" theory of warfare which says that most big wars are terrible mismatches, possibly because cooler heads will generally prevail when both sides really can win. Shelby Foote once said of the ACW "The North beat us with one hand tied behind their back, if we had ever really seemed like we were going to win they would have just brought out the other hand and beat us to death with that" The same thing is true of WWII and lots of other wars, (though WWI is the other idea, either side really could have won there.)

    However, as I understand it Confederacy is supposed to be like Bring the Jubilee one of the earlier classics of AH, which is about what a Triumphant Confederacy would have been like. That does seem inflammatory, which might mean it won't get made, or it will be wildly successful. I'd watch it.
     
  11. Concord

    Concord Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 20, 2013
    Messages:
    3,856
    Likes Received:
    876
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    There was a single incident of British soldiers purposefully giving smallpox infected items to a Native delegation.

    Not genocide at all.

    The Natives by that point had been exposed to Eurasian diseases for centuries.
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2017
  12. Concord

    Concord Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Sep 20, 2013
    Messages:
    3,856
    Likes Received:
    876
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Wait, what happened? This was supposed to be a fun alternative history thread.
     
  13. Moi621

    Moi621 Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Jul 13, 2013
    Messages:
    19,292
    Likes Received:
    7,606
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    Don't forget the Jews of the old South. One was even the Vice President of the CSA for a while.
    Explored in a historical fiction by Noah Gordon, Shaman. https://www.amazon.com/Shaman-Cole-Noah-Gordon/dp/0751500828
    Civil War buffs will like this book too although it starts in the days when Abe Lincoln was personally genociding Native Americans.

    Well the idea is, Passover, about the liberation from slavery.
    And the Jewish family in the old South celebrating Passover with their slaves serving them.
    How's that for cognitive dissonance the state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes.

    Mark Twain also wrote an essay about Jews in America and the old South "Concerning the Jews". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concerning_the_Jews

    Jews were as present in the CSA and the Federals during the War Between The States.
    So where was the moral high ground. :hmm:
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2017
  14. zoom_copter66

    zoom_copter66 Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Jul 6, 2016
    Messages:
    16,502
    Likes Received:
    8,471
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male

    Had the south won, they'd move the capital to Atlanta perhaps, Jeff Davis would be president, if not Robert E Lee, would be VP.
     
  15. Texas Republican

    Texas Republican Well-Known Member Past Donor

    Joined:
    Aug 10, 2015
    Messages:
    28,121
    Likes Received:
    19,405
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Most experts say slavery would have ended by 1890-1910.
     
  16. stepmac

    stepmac Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 28, 2017
    Messages:
    156
    Likes Received:
    36
    Trophy Points:
    28
    Gender:
    Male
    Another part to that story of smallpox infected blankets is, that the steamer Far West was loaded with people sick with smallpox. Blankets that they had used were piled on deck and the Indians stole them. So the infected blankets weren't "given" to them, but they took them. I really don't think people would purposely infect Indians. That is beyond cruel. Nor was anyone paying Indians for White scalps. All myths. However, the smallpox epidemic swept thru many tribes, the Mandans for one, and killed Indians in mass and that is true. Measles and mumps too. Even the common cold was deadly to an Indian.

    Were the soldiers the most cruel? I don't think so. Consider the Great Sioux Uprising in ca 1864. Six hundred Whites were slaughtered by marauding Indians, many of whom were living on reservations. Pretty much all of the settlers around Denver were murdered by Indians during the 1860's. The mail was stopped and the people in town feared starvation. This lead to the Sand Creek "massacre".
     
  17. stepmac

    stepmac Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 28, 2017
    Messages:
    156
    Likes Received:
    36
    Trophy Points:
    28
    Gender:
    Male
    You must read Freemantle's book. It is a first hand, eyewitness account of life in the Old South and slavery. He entered thru Mexico as to not offend Yankees by going thru their territory. He had a rather difficult time getting back North before returning to Britain. Indeed the British were concerned about how they would look if they supported the South, but they were tending to be more pro Southern than Yankee Many plantation owners carried British blood and manners. Slavery had been abolished in the Empire during the 18th Century. Freemantle wanted to see if slavery in the South was a cruel as we learned in "Uncle Tom's Cabin". He learned that it was not. You must read the book. Now, I am not going to apologize for slavery. The institution ended as it should have and there was never a movement to reinstate it. Lincoln even sponsored a new nation in Africa as a place for former slaves to return to Africa. That place is called Liberia today.
     
  18. TOG 6

    TOG 6 Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Oct 23, 2015
    Messages:
    47,848
    Likes Received:
    19,638
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Why would that happen? The CSA had no desire to conquer the US, only to leave.
     
  19. Noserose

    Noserose Newly Registered

    Joined:
    Jul 14, 2017
    Messages:
    51
    Likes Received:
    40
    Trophy Points:
    18
    Gender:
    Female
    Some very interesting and intelligent replies. A pleasure to read. Thank you

    Rose
     
  20. stepmac

    stepmac Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 28, 2017
    Messages:
    156
    Likes Received:
    36
    Trophy Points:
    28
    Gender:
    Male
    For whatever it's worth, I live near Paisley, Oregon. They have found evidence that Indians were here 14,000 years ago, which pushes the number back about 3,000 years from the Clovis culture. Indians, therefore have lived here for a very long time. I have learned how to identify Indian stone tools. There isn't much of a trick to it, but you kind of have to learn to "see" them. They are all over the place. I found a nice one two days ago and gave it to friend of mine. He has a rock on his place with cone shaped holes ground in it from Indians using it to make pemmican. I found a pestle and he placed it in the hole. Did Indians come over the land bridge from Siberia? Maybe, but whatever happened, it happened a long time ago.
     
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2017
  21. Battle3

    Battle3 Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Oct 14, 2013
    Messages:
    16,248
    Likes Received:
    3,012
    Trophy Points:
    113

    Total BS.

    Are people so uneducated that they believe that if the Confederacy had won that slavery would be nationwide?

    The Confederacy wanted to leave the USA and become their own independent nation - or nations. The Confederacy had no desire or intent to conquer the USA and rule from the White House. The Civil War was to force the Confederate states to stay in the Union.

    If the Confederacy had won, the USA would still exist but with fewer states, and would have 2 "southern borders", one with Mexico and the other with the Confederacy..

    And if the Confederacy had won, slavery still would have ended. Slavery was becoming uneconomical even in the 1860's, and automation was starting to create alternatives. There was also opposition to slavery in the South, the idea that all Southerners owned slaves or supported slavery is a wild exaggeration. Certainly by 1900 slavery would have been over.
     
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2017
  22. stepmac

    stepmac Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 28, 2017
    Messages:
    156
    Likes Received:
    36
    Trophy Points:
    28
    Gender:
    Male
    If the South had won the Civil War slavery would have had to end because it was just so immoral. That fact that it didn't pay wasn't so much of an issue because slave owners considered that it DID pay. They invested in and traded in slaves and made money doing it. The rest of the World's civilized nations would have put so much pressure on the South to end the inhuman practice that they would have come up with some way to do it. Maybe they would have required that slaves purchase themselves, as Frederick Douglass did. Slavery was still in place in 1860 because it was a money maker.
     
  23. stepmac

    stepmac Active Member

    Joined:
    Feb 28, 2017
    Messages:
    156
    Likes Received:
    36
    Trophy Points:
    28
    Gender:
    Male
    We would have been divided into two nations. One with slavery and one without. The competition between the two would have been interesting. I suspect feelings between the two would have been pretty raw for some time - well into the 21st Century for sure. I imagine that slaves would be running away from their owners like mad and the established underground railroad would be well organized. I wonder which country the territories would join. There'd be an ongoing problem there too. The relationship between the two countries may have become like the one between the Germans and the French. They live next door to one another, but never really get along and they are almost constantly fighting wars between one another.
     
  24. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Mar 9, 2013
    Messages:
    41,184
    Likes Received:
    16,180
    Trophy Points:
    113
    Gender:
    Male
    A major thing I think most Confederacy Triumphant scenarios miss is that in 1865 the USA was still regarded as not much more than a third class power by the rest of the world. Now the fact that we had just fielded Armies and fought whole campaigns quite equivalent in size and technology to anything then being done in the world and done the whole thing in our own country certainly shook the old powers in Europe up quite a bit, yes, but I still have to think that Great Britain, at least, would see a divided America as more of an opportunity than a threat. There were still factions in Old Blighty that regarded the ARW as more of a dreadful misunderstanding than a permanent thing, and I can't help but see the South becoming a part of the British commonwealth in short order except for this really knotty slavery business. The Brits were very against slavery, its abolition being one of the main things that fueled its imperialism. OTOH that might be the very thing that brings them and the Confederacy together. GB at the time was the world's largest economy, about 25x as large as the USA; could an economy of that size have "bailed out" the slaveowners and helped them bear the costs of manumission? Interesting question, how did governments bail out industries back then, or is that completely a modern development?
     
    Last edited: Aug 16, 2017
    Labouroflove likes this.
  25. Battle3

    Battle3 Well-Known Member

    Joined:
    Oct 14, 2013
    Messages:
    16,248
    Likes Received:
    3,012
    Trophy Points:
    113

    Slavery would have ended by 1900. Automation that reduced the need for manual labor in agriculture started to show up in the late 19th century. Slavery in the South was a foundation of the agricultural industry, in general "middle class" people did not own slaves but supported (or tolerated) slavery out of fear that without it the entire Southern economy would crash. Once an alternative showed up (automation) then slavery was over. That's all outside the moral aspects, which would have accelerated the process.

    I disagree that the North would have resentment towards the South if the Confederacy had won. Southerners even today have resentment towards the North, and its growing because of the targeting of Southern history by BLS and "progressives", because the North militarily imposed its will on the South. The war was fought in the South, destroyed much of the South (the Southern states GDP did not recover until after WW2), and the North acted like an occupying force, and there were many abuses of Southerners for decades after the war ended.

    But the South had no desire to change the North, the South just wanted their independence. If they had won the war, the North would have gone on as before but without the unfair taxation of the South and the unfair trade regulations on Southern agricultural products - which were huge Southern motivations for independence.

    Where the Western states would have gone is interesting.
     

Share This Page