Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I'm not saying that slavery was not an issue... I am only saying that slavery is not the reason the war was fought. This oversimplified "reason the war was fought" has been taught in schools for decades, but it's not correct. It was a much deeper and more complicated affair.
The war was prosecuted by the north to nullify the secession of the southern states. The secession of the southern states was undertaken to preseve the institution of slavery. And we know this because those who drove secession told us so.
For example, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas all made in abundantly clear that slavery was the issue. Declaration of Causes of Secession
And you can dig up the declarations of secession for the other seven states and, guess what? You'll find the same thing.
Or you can listen to the Vice President of the Confederate States, Alexander Stephens, in his famous Cornerstone Speech:
Quote:
Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.[1]
It would have dumped slavery in less than ten years. The North would have refused to trade with the South and forced them to dump slavery.
Well, in the first place, I think anyone who think that USA would have imposed some sort of boycott of the CSA on moral grounds has a slightly naive view of history.
Secondly, it works both ways. Before the South depended on the North for every single manufactured good. Independence would have mean the freedom to import goods from other countries (namely Britain) and eventually an attempt to create some sort of industry of their own.
Secondly, it works both ways. Before the South depended on the North for every single manufactured good. Independence would have mean the freedom to import goods from other countries (namely Britain) and eventually an attempt to create some sort of industry of their own.
You have that a little backwards. One of the arguments in the years leading up to the Civil War was tariffs designed to protect northern industry from foreign imports. The people this tariff fell most squarely upon was the southern states who received a massive portion of their manufactured and luxury goods from Europe. The ships that took the cotton to Britain needed to come back with something.
You have that a little backwards. One of the arguments in the years leading up to the Civil War was tariffs designed to protect northern industry from foreign imports. The people this tariff fell most squarely upon was the southern states who received a massive portion of their manufactured and luxury goods from Europe. The ships that took the cotton to Britain needed to come back with something.
In terms of the thread title, this would not have been the same post war whoever won. The British had begun to plant cotton in India, and produced a higher quality at much less cost, not to mention they owned the whole operation. Southern cotton would have found a market but by then their main one was already diverted. And the South would have to have had some trade to be able to buy goods from Europe, but if they won would have been entirely on their own in restroing their economy and infastructure. Trade is only possible when the goods can get safely and on time to ports.
The people who did the buying were not the lower white classes who were very poor, but the planter society, and their wealth (not in terms of cotton, but storable wealth) was gone.
If the North 'lost' it would be in a very different way than the South did. They would have lost territory in the South, but the South was never successful in taking and holding Northern territory. While the South lay in ruin and poverty, the North would continue to have its manufacturing and shipping and economy and no doubt immigration. Would someone from a poor courntry in Europe want to immigrate to another poor, war ravaged one?
Militarily they'd still have the Navy. And even in victory they had a huge army never deployed waiting just in case. They still would have been able to retain a status in world trade, though a less major one. Only if the South was willing to change its way of thinking and promote manufacturing as the North had could it compete with the world. By then, someone who mostly produces agriculture would be a minor, poor state.
As for the west, I think massive numbers of southerners would have gone there just to have a better chance, as well as all the others who did as *world* conditions were condusive to leaving home for a new start then, and the dynamics might not have been all that different.
Basically the South fought for its way of life an in the process destroyed it. A victory would not have really changed that.
Probably a lot like South Africa today. Likewise, the North would not likely have become a true world power and the West may have become a country of it's own that was more Latin American in nature.
United We Stand and all that... Lincoln knew we would be screwed if the union didn't stay together.
I don't think the op understand the question they are asking.
Before the CW, there were already several well established northern cities that were unlikely to fall. I am the naysayer here. I don't believe the south would have changed much because its wealth hinged on free labor and ignorance.
Aside there are more than a few who do not understand that there was a kidnapped African sold as a slave in the New World before the dawn of the 17th century, or that the Dutch on Long Island owned slavesover 200 years before the Civil War. The difference seems to me, and I could be wrong, is the south held on more tightly to owning of slaves than did the north. One of the most unusual novels I ever read about southern slavery was 'Mandingo'.
The South could not have "won" the war. There was nothing to win. They only could have held off the inevitable re-unification of the Union and the Confederacy, which would have occurred as soon as the Emperor of Brazil freed the slaves and they figured out that they were the only "rogue state" left in the western world, and there was no place for the principles of their Confederacy in modern civilization.
The answer, about all modern wars, is that things would be very much the same today as they are, regardless of the outcome. What if Germany had won the First World War? What if the USA had won the Vietnam war? Wars are not won or lost, they are just ended,and people get back to their peacetime lives within the context of whatever culture had prevailed at the time of the outbreak.
If the Zulus had won the Zulu wars, and expelled the Europeans from Africa, well, Zimbabwe would now be just like Ethiopia. Guess what? Zimbabwe is just like Ethiopia.
Utterly nonsensical post, for while one could cherry pick some wars, many others don't yield to your pat little hypothesis.
What if England had sued for peace in May, 1940, leaving Hitler a free hand to deal with the Soviets? Do you think the shape of the world would be different today? Yep. What if the Whites had won against the Reds in the Russian Civil War? What if Chiang Kai Shek had prevailed against Mao? What if the Japanese had prevailed in the Pacific? I can guarantee you that we'd looking at an utterly different political, economic, and social order than what we have today.
Going back two centuries, what if Britain had acceded to Napoleon's de facto conquest of Europe in 1805? Would the shape of 19th Century Europe been much different? You bet your bottom dollar it would.
And I think your disclaimer on modern wars versus other wars to be a little absurd, too, given that wars are wars. What if the Romans hadn't beaten the Etruscans? What if the Athenians had beaten the Spartans? What if the Persians had overrun the Greeks? Our entire civilization would be completely and utterly different. Even the Civil War had a lasting effect on the history of America, determining once and for all the supremacy of a strong centralized Federal government over the wishes and desires of the states.
Well, being an American Indian (Comanche Nation of Oklahoma), the question is somewhat irrelevant to me. The CSA would have been no more honorable in the dealings with the Indian Nations than the USA was. My people, in particular, were hated by the Texans before, during and after the Civil War and I think the outcome for us would have been no different. I think this is true for all the Nations as both the USA and CSA expanded West.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
