Suppose that the Southern States had won the Civil War?

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I personally believe had slavery in the southern states been allowed to die out naturally the great racial tensions could have largely been avoided. A lot of the hatred of blacks can be largely attributed to the intense bitterness over the loss of the civil war and the economic decline that followed.

Southern whites viewed blacks as inferior. In general, everyone was racist, even in the North.

Few in the Union believed that a black man could be on equal terms with a white man. However many in the Union believed that slavery was an abomination.

ruveyn

Why would slavery have died out on its own? Most of the people in some southern states were slaves, and it took federal troops to come in and announce that they were free.

Modern industrial technological systems do not work will with labor provided by chattels.

ruveyn

The form of slavery that existed in the South was only viable as long as land for growing labor-intensive crops (cotton, cane, etc) was cheap and fertile. Much of the land in the South was close to exhaustion by then.

Why wouldn't modern industrial technological systems work with labor provided by chattels? Many slaves in the South were, in fact, highly skilled craftsmen.

Thomas Jefferson owned over 600 slaves, many of whom he fathered himself. And, many of his slaves were quite skilled, especially those who built Monticello.

Slave labour was used to build the US capital.

After federal troops freed the slaves, many southern plantations move to a sharecropping system, which built upon the old model of slavery. The only difference was that the people could no longer be auctioned off.

One of the main costs of slavery was deliberate slow work on the part of the slave along with escapes to freedom. A voluntary worker is more productive.

Can you see people on assembly lines being whipped to make them work faster. Simon Legree is out of place in an industrial scence.

In the late and unlamented Soviet Union where workers toiled for the State production was very low. To get good work from workers one has to give them good material incentives and a certain amount of respect.

ruveyn

There's a series of books written by alternative history author Harry Turtledove that almost mirrors when you've described (with a twist):

The point of divergence with our timeline is during Lee's first invasion of the North. In actual history, a copy of the general's orders to his subordinates was lost, the Union Army found it and caught up with the Confederates at Antietam; fighting Lee to a draw and forcing him back to Virginia. Instead, the order is not lost; the Confederates make it to near Harrisburg, PA and win a major victory against McClellan's army, which nearly collapses. They occupy Harrisburg and then Philadelphia; the UK and France intervene and the Confederacy wins its independence.

Twenty years later, the Confederacy buys two states from Mexico to have access to the Pacific, and the U.S. declares war to stop it. The UK and France ally with the CSA and defeat the U.S. again; afterwards, the U.S. forms an alliance with Germany. Since the U.S. President at the time was a Republican (the party in power while the U.S. lost its last two wars), the GOP becomes a minority party (the Democrats are still the conservative party at the time). Instead, led by Abraham Lincoln (who wasn't assassinated), left-wing Republicans unite with socialists to make the Socialist Party the other major party in the U.S. The CSA was forced by Britain and France to end slavery, but replaces it with a harsh form of Apartheid.

World War I begins as it did in real history, but with the U.S. allied with Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire and the Confederacy allied with Britain, France and Russia. After years of trench warfare, the U.S. and its allies (whose leading general was an elderly George Custer) finally make use of tanks and win. The CSA is crippled during the war by socialist revolutions in black-majority areas and loses territory to the USA, who also occupies Canada (except Quebec, which becomes independent); the Bolshevik revolution is eventually crushed by the forces of the Czar.

Fascism rises in France (the Action Française makes France a fascist monarchy) and Britain (Mosley is a more powerful figure, but does not take power) instead of Germany (no Hitler); the Confederacy is ruled by the fascist Freedom Party and its leader, Jake Featherston. He demands, and receives via plebiscite, much of the territory lost to the USA, but invades the US anyway. Featherston's CSA is so much like Hitler's Germany that Richmond actually hosts the 1936 Summer Olympics.

The Confederate army takes Ohio and splits the U.S in two, but is soundly defeated when they try to take Pittsburgh. The Confederates build the first atom bomb and sneaks it into Philadelphia (the capital since the Civil War or War of Secession as it is called in the books), but it detonates on the outskirts of town. The U.S. nukes Norfolk and Charleston, and the U.S. army drives deep into the Confederacy in a 20th century-version of Sherman's March to the Sea, and troops discover that the Confederate government has rounded blacks into concentration camps and committing genocide. The U.S. and Germany win (atom bombs have been dropped on cities in Europe as well), the Confederacy ceases to exist and a occupation begins with significant resistance.

Oh yeah, the Mormons in Utah seem to rise in revolt during each of the wars, so the U.S. army must pacify three different rebellious areas on the continent.

An interesting and entertaining series of books; it certainly paints the picture of a darker world.

Employers have the same problems with unions, which have been quickly going away anyway, much to the satisfaction of capitalism. Also, employers can have problems with some employees who quit when another employer offers a higher salary. At least with slaves, you had a good chance of having them returned to you, unless they made it to Canada.

Nowadays, you just fire someone you don't like, and just be a little bit mindful of our pretentious EEO laws, which really only exist for show.

Instead of being physically whipped, employees these days face a lot of psychological pressures. The satisfaction that a supervisor derives from exercising control and lording over properly obsequious subordinates must not be impugned.

At least with slaves, you didn't have to worry about health insurance and pensions--when they got old and sick, you just shot them or worked them to death.



You shouldn't be so critical of slaves. Most of them made fine, outstanding workers, labouring hard from sun-up to sun-down, so long as anti-Americans like Abe Lincoln, Karl Marx and Michael Moore didn't put foolish ideas into their heads.

To beejay

Thanks. That IS interesting- about the turtledove books.
Sounds like a dark but fun romp through history.
It does mirror my ideas in some ways.

Before the civil war there were attempts in America at manning urban factories with slaves but for some reason it never worked economically.

Slavery works on rural plantations, but not in urban factories.

Hypothetical...

If the south was strong enough who knows.

As they were not they wouldn't have held onto it very long.

Low production? They still managed to out-tank everybody else combined...

Dont forget that there is such a thing as political pressure. Had the south been a touch more successful militarily, other nations would have come on board and recognised them as a legitimate nation. Its not much of a jump to see new supplies, militaria and possibly even troops (advisors?) sailing into southern ports after that. And of course the long term result of such a partnership is a certain amount of political leverage on the part of the suppliers... and as the biggest potential backers were all anti-slaving nations, no doubt pressure would have been applied into an "adjustment" of the southern economy to a less slave-based system.. Eventuallly the slave system would have been removed.

And imo the southern cross is much more aesthetically pleasing to look at.

The T-34 built under pressure of war using the Chirsty Suspension which was invented in the United States. Given there was a war on and the alternative was fight successfully or die, I am not surprised the Soviets came through. After the war, their economy went into the crapper and it stayed there. In terms of goods that people use every day like soap and toilet paper, Soviet subjects had to stand in line four hours a day to get the necessities.

The Soviet Union had a second rate economy from the git go and it collapsed under the weight of corruption, centralized control and failure to give workers an incentive to produce. They used to have a joke in the era following the Great Patriotic War: It went like this: They pretend to pay us and we pretend to do work for the pay.

ruveyn