Confederate Legacy

Economics would have ended slavery, as it had already begun to do. Slavery was actually on the way out just a few decades prior, but took a turn when internati ok nal prices for cotton skyrocketed. They plummeted after the war due to competition from India, and slavery in the U.S. would have ended slowly over time, due to either economic cause or social movements.

But the CSA itself was basically about states rights, as evidenced by statements of men like Longstreet and Lee. It was a different view - they viewed themselves as Virgins first and Americans second (just as an example). State governments would be more free to act upon local interests, and so government would more closely reflect the will of the represented.

 

The invention of the Cotten Gin changed everything. Slave labor was becoming marginal before it's invention, but became highly profitable after.

 

The cotton gin was what led to the vast increase in the use of slave labor in the South in the first half of the 19th century.

Contrary to the claim that "slavery was dying out", Southern politicians relentlessly fought EVERY effort to keep it from expanding before 1861.

Every single state that joined the Confederacy had slavery written into its constitution.

The rise of cotton growing in Egypt and India was a result of the American civil war. British textile merchants were looking for a replacement for American cotton and wanted it to come from places that were politically stable, preferably from within the Empire.

The Civil War cost the Confederacy its major export market, one they never got back.

That, and their near total lack of any industrial infrastructure, and a very weak central government doomed it from the start.

 

It went hand in hand with international demand for cotton rising over the three decades prior to the Civil War, before which cash crop prices were not strong and slavery was slowly abolished in many states, and it was already dying out in the upper south.

American production of cotton grew exponentially from 156k bales in 1800 to over 4,000k bales in 1860 without any significant affect on the price of cotton. That the price didn't significantly change shows that the rapid increase in demand was on pace with the rapid increase of production (but adding India into the mix changed that fact).

^_- which does absolutely nothing to change that "slavery was dying out".

And so you think that current law is an accurate measure of public sentiment existing and to come then? ^_- So you would tell me that the vast majority of the U.S. public is and for the next 100 years will be against marijuana legalization, because we currently have a law against it?

You're either making moot points or arguing against straw men.

No, it was the result of rapidly rising demand, the development of the cotton gin, and British mercantilism policies. Cotton would have been grown there regardless.

One which they never got back because of simple economics. They had a competitor which had many advantages over them, and while the South DID get back into exporting cotton, they couldn't get a price on the international market that was worth it. It costed more to keep a slave in the U.S. than to hire laborers in India.

This is entirely separate, and no, you're quite mistaken. At "the start" the CSA had the military resources to win early victories - but based on principle, it refrained from outright invasion.

 

I doubt that CSA would support abolishing slavery. They would feed off of slavery long years of their country's possible existence.
Why do you think it's economics that ended slavery? I think it was human attitude first, and slaves were rather cheap.

 

I doubt that the CSA would have lasted more than a couple of decades even if the Union had not enforced its sovereignty.

The war destroyed the already fragile plantation economy of the south. England saw the CSA as an unreliable source of raw material, and so cultivated cotton in India and Egypt, costing the CSA half its market, and making it entirely economically dependent on its northern rivals.

Slavery would have died out at some point.

The last major nation in the Americas (brazil) outlawed slavery in 1867. The CSA would have perpetuated it far longer than that.

To pretend that slavery was not a key issue, when it is specifically mentioned in the secession documents of every single state that joined the CSA and is referenced in the Constitution of the CSA itself is ludicrous.

The CSA was hardly a functioning government at all. It was operated with an extremely weak central government and no central bank. Inflation during the war was many times worse in the South than it was in the North (where it was bad, too).

The total lack of any industrial base, the dependence of foreign capital, the one export economy would have doomed the South to third world status.

 

It was ideology that wouldn't had died.