If the South had won, what do you think would have taken place? (Roman, influence)
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The encroachment of powers to the north and south would have been a motivation to get back together, albeit on different terms than we have in the 1789 Constitution.
There may well have been a new constitutional convention 15-20 years after the war.
I don't think the north would have split, but given the diversity of the south and the intent to not centralize power, it likely would have. The European powers could have easily used this to their advantage and dominated trade, linking their economies with two smaller states. The North would still be the stronger, however, since they had a manufactering structure which was required to take your place in the first row on nations. Either the south would have got their act together and caught up or been someones vassel state economically.
Politics seems to often involve a system of polarization. Somehow, someone would have enacted something to create a division amongst the people of the South in order to win.
Divide and conquer. Always been a common theme. People are ignorant. Ego and pride, not to mention slavery, it all would've collapsed. Just like how most major systems do when they are corrupt. Greed. You can only run on thin for so long.
Politics seems to often involve a system of polarization. Somehow, someone would have enacted something to create a division amongst the people of the South in order to win.
Divide and conquer. Always been a common theme. People are ignorant. Ego and pride, not to mention slavery, it all would've collapsed. Just like how most major systems do when they are corrupt. Greed. You can only run on thin for so long.
Well, that is one way of looking at it. Divide and conquer would have been used in the South alot, as it was before.
I have to think about this. In the video, it was mentioned that while the South might eventually get rid of slavery, it was theorized that the South might undergo a South Africa-like apartheid system. The South had the whole Jim Crow thing going as a part of the USA. It leaves me to wonder how much this would have taken place if the South had become its own nation. And how much divide and conquer would be used. The elite powers in the South, in my opinion, would have used divide and conquer to keep power. Most of the South's White population wasn't that well off. And with a free Black population being in a position of absolute poverty, there would have been alot of tension. There might have been a kind of solidarity evolving on the basis of being poor and needing work and a better way for one's self. That might have spurred rebellions and a revolution might have taken place. On the other hand, there could have also been a definite attitude of looking down on "the other". That might keep any kind of class solidarity to a minimum, making people easier to divide and to keep fighting one another.
The Confederacy would have broken apart as the result of same passions that saw its creation, the idea that states were sovereign and the resolution of disputes over resolutions fairly arrived at was to take leave of whatever union that enacted them.
The seeds of Confederate disunion could be seen in the conduct of the states during the war. The inability of the central government to properly enact and collect taxes, resistance to providing for the common defense and the recalcitrance on the part of state governments to even relinquish control of forces needed to defend their erstwhile nation.
In short the same issues of state's rights in the extreme.
It depends on where you grew up. I suspect you might have either grown up in the Northeast or the Chicago area. I lived in Georgia(still there now until I get a job offer elsewhere), so it was what I saw where I lived.
In the 70s, the Confederate flag was not uncommon in New York state where I grew up (Buffalo area). It was seen as more a sign of rebelliousness than anything else, sort of like the Gadsden flag now. It didn't have a particular connotation to racism at that time (at least there)...and yes, the Dukes of Hazard and the General Lee did more to popularize it than any notion of racism. From what I've seen, the "branding" of the Confederate battle flag as racist is a fairly recent occurrence of some of the more extreme of the liberal front. For most, I think it is still a sign more of rebelliousness and unwillingness to submit (for lack of a better description), as well as pride in a southern heritage. You do still see the flag in a large number of places outside the south.
Dissatisfaction would have grown, and state governments would have voted for readmission into the Union. It would have started with the Upper South (Arkansas, Tennessee, etc) and ended in the Deep South.
A couple of states, perhaps Mississippi and South Carolina, would have remained nominally independent even to the present day, but they would have signed free trade agreements with the United States and fallen under the American security umbrella.
That could have been a possibility but I believe there could have been so many more different possibilities depending on how the war came to a end. Clear defeat or ceasefire in the CSA favor would open many different competing futures. Most importantly would be the race to the pacific and which states joined which side if the Union was still together at all afterwords.
If the Union was defeated as suggested in this topic, there could have been territorial boundaries rewritten with many states going to the south. The Union could have dissolved completely with the capitol taken by the south. The Union didn't let the south go and I don't think it is a farfetched idea that the south would have let the Union stand after a victory. That much blood on the ground they might have taken the stance to end it for the North to prevent future war. A division by the northern states themselves could have easily happened after a lose so great.
There are just to many possibilities if the CSA obtained the upper-hand and won. I think believing that they would be crawling back to the Union isn't very logical considering if they actually did win the narrative of what had happen and fallout of the war would be completely different today.
We could all be leaving in the CSA today or multiple countries.
Most of the comments seem to appear that if the south would have won the boundaries would have stayed the same or they would have divided themselves again. What might have happened to the North is also valid.
That could have been a possibility but I believe there could have been so many more different possibilities depending on how the war came to a end. Clear defeat or ceasefire in the CSA favor would open many different competing futures. Most importantly would be the race to the pacific and which states joined which side if the Union was still together at all afterwords.
Even the wildest speculation could not reasonably lead one to believe that "clear" defeat of the Union was even remotely possible. A capitulation by the United States, yes which would have simply been a matter of letting the Confederacy to go. As for the United States being broken up... that is ridiculous. A more likely scenario would have been a refusal of border areas in northern Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, to be drawn into the Confederacy just as West Virginia has moved away from Virginia.
As for the Western states, California was already solidly in the Union. The south more likely would have attempted to intrude into Mexico which would have been very interesting considering France had already invaded and taken over Mexico.
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