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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.
I think you likely correct with the above. Manifest destiny was not a concept exclusive to the North or the South. The sections may have had competing visions as to what the west was to be like once settled, but neither of those visions included Native Americans in any sort of position of political power.
The South tried to make nice with The Nations tribes at the start of the war, largely because they lived in areas under Confederate control and would make for better allies than enemies. That was but a temporary expedient and the Southern attitudes toward Indians is much more clearly revealed in the fact that those sought after allies in The Nations, were only there because Southerners had evicted them from their homes, stolen their property and forced them to relocate.
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.
Steve Barnes book Lion's Blood is the story of an entierly different South, complete with Irish slaves and plantations run by the North African tribes and the Vikings the ones who capture and ship. It is an extraordinary book. But the core of the alternate history is that the Greeks lost to Persia, Rome was a minor state which never went anywhere and Europe remained backward and tribal and ripe for the taking of slaves. Change one or two pivital points in history and you change vast events. (trick is, what is pivital since not all of them are 'big' things)
If the South had won, it would have to be a far different South to begin with. It lacked manpower and industry. The blockade was so successful because they did not have the ability to manufacture what they needed. At the end of the war, the South, using old men and boys, the North had whole divisions never even called up. This calls into question if there would have been a war, if the South had been able to provide this.
In order to provide manufacturing, they'd have had to sacrifice their culture. They'd have had to be willing to draw lots of immigrants to work the factories. Could they have used slaves? Maybe. But the North abandoned slavery early on when it proved far more econimical to hire very cheap only the bodies you needed to work, and not worry about grandma or the little ones. If they had a large influx of immigrants, it would have also radically altered the culture from a largely rural one one more resembling the North. Since in a very real way, it was about culture, would there have even been a war?
Increased immigration would have given them a far larger pool of soldiers, but they would not be fighting to maintain the old sleepy south of the planters. Would they have reshaped the labor system to give the white immigrant a step up from the bottom, played the race card as came later? The cost of this would have been the society which sits in misty memory.
Had the South "won", it would only mean they maintained their independence from the North. The South never would have "won" in a total victory, by capturing the North. They simply did not have the manpower to achieve such a feat. The North had 2X the population of the South, and Irish immigrants were flowing into Ellis Island by the thousands each day. The North had an endless supply of reserves to draft into the army. The South had exhausted all of its manpower in 4 years of devastating war.
But had the South won independence, I could see two possible outcomes.
A) The South is even poorer, less educated, and more backwards than it is today- although things have rapidly improved in the South in recent decades. A weak central government, big on states rights, and vulnerable to foreign invasion.
B) The South undergoes a massive industrial growth process similar to what Germany did in the late 1800's.
Since the war was never fought over slavery (a big lie that has been told so many times that people tend to believe it)... I would assume it would be long gone.
Unions would never have gotten the stranglehold on the Northern states that almost killed them.
More governmental issues would be handled at the state level rather than shoved down our throats from the Feds.
We probably would have killed at least a million more Northerners... just to watch them die.
And there you are wrong. It's not a 'big lie'. It is what started it, but it wasn't the main reason.
i THINK it would not end, someone would try to unify it at some point. If the south marched into washington and conquered the north. I guess the whole nation would be more southern in culture, more laid back in terms of work. We might be more conservative as a nation.
I am not really sure it would look all that different, then again I don't know what the southern's long term vision would be. Maybe mexico would be the 51st state
In hindsight, how would the south ever develop, I think the south would have ended up like portugal,spain or argentina a country that was rich in the colonial era but failed to modernize and ended up being perpetually poor and broke as a result of it. When you understand Germany rised from less than nothing to make the most modern major nation in europe it is no small task. Portugal, spain, netherlands, belgium and england and france had the huge advantage of being able to rip off colonies and steal their wealth. Germany never got to rob anyone yet they are still number 1. Without Germany Europe would probably be 3rd world.
I suspect that the south would still be backwards economically with the exception of Texas and slavery might have lasted longer and america would have more blacks.
In hindsight, how would the south ever develop, I think the south would have ended up like portugal,spain or argentina a country that was rich in the colonial era but failed to modernize and ended up being perpetually poor and broke as a result of it. When you understand Germany rised from less than nothing to make the most modern major nation in europe it is no small task. Portugal, spain, netherlands, belgium and england and france had the huge advantage of being able to rip off colonies and steal their wealth. Germany never got to rob anyone yet they are still number 1. Without Germany Europe would probably be 3rd world.
I suspect that the south would still be backwards economically with the exception of Texas and slavery might have lasted longer and america would have more blacks.
Funny how much the German Americans settled heavily in the north and midwest and provided the bulk of the troops and industry needed to defeat the south. Also more than 50 million Americans today are German descendants.
Yeah Germans have contributed alot. It is no surprise to me the entire white civilized world comes out of there. Anglo saxons, angles and saxony, tribes from germany originally. Its no accident they dominated the world while the scotts just made a drink. Look at the rest of east europe. Austria hungary, look at what austria is today (modern 1st world germanic nation) and hungary (3rd world ghetto where pornstars come from)
In hindsight, how would the south ever develop, I think the south would have ended up like portugal,spain or argentina a country that was rich in the colonial era but failed to modernize and ended up being perpetually poor and broke as a result of it. When you understand Germany rised from less than nothing to make the most modern major nation in europe it is no small task. Portugal, spain, netherlands, belgium and england and france had the huge advantage of being able to rip off colonies and steal their wealth. Germany never got to rob anyone yet they are still number 1. Without Germany Europe would probably be 3rd world.
I suspect that the south would still be backwards economically with the exception of Texas and slavery might have lasted longer and america would have more blacks.
It's both a crazy and interesting question. Slavery was profitable, but the garment industry would certainly have evolved differently. Europe was the biggest source of demand prior to the conflict, but as the Union grew they would have had to make some sort of accommodation in order to import cotton and or cotton goods, depending where the processing grew.
However, had the Union caved in, a lot of what happened in the short-term would have depended upon whether the Radical Republicans and old Whig Republicans maintained their power over the more accommodating Democrats.
Would slavery have survived? For a while, probably, but the pressure to end slavery would have been strong from the South's European trading partners. The question is how could the South have modernized to cope with this? That's an interesting question.
The cotton industry was a very important part of the Northern and Southern economies. There would have been tremendous short-term economic adjustment problems up North, too. How would the Union have modernized?
Also, once slavery did end, wouldn't there still have been a mass exodus of former slaves to the more-developed North? Or would the North have clamped down on immigration?
So many questions to answer, to answer the question. But I think, on the whole, the economic consequences in the short-, and perhaps the long-, term to both economies would have been problematic.
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