Posted on 04/12/2013 10:06:29 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
Not in good shape. For starters, the Confederacy isn’t going anywhere good. Assuming that it doesn’t break up (which is a very real possibility), it would probably become a giant banana-republic. It would probably be beholden to the European great powers for security against the US and for investment. A poorly educated nation with an economy centered around exporting agricultural goods, lacking a large native body of businessmen and professionals (the South relied heavily on Yankees and foreigners to run businesses and industry), I could easily see the result looking like the South America of the time - a mess of bitter, divided, petty nation-states, deeply in debt to Europe, and highly influenced by them, a target of gunboat diplomacy. International pressure would probably lead to slavery being outlawed by the 1890s at the latest, but in its place would be legislation that would make Jim Crow seem moderate by comparison.
The Union wouldn’t be much better. If secession is proven as a doctrine, other states or territories might splinter off, and this could lead to a more tumultuous, violent, or even increasingly centralized or authoritarian America in the future. The nation might be less desirable as a destination for foreign migration. There had been talk by Seward of invading Canada to compensate for the potential loss the South, but I can’t see that going well, and hopefully cooler heads would prevail. America would now be facing a potentially hostile state or collection of states right next to its core regions, and would have to devote its energies to creating a larger military to defend its borders, instead of focusing on the West and economic expansion. US prestige internationally would suffer greatly, and without the additional population, territory, and economy of the South, American development would be stunted.
You should try it yourself. Slavery would have continued for decades had the South won. It's what they were fighting for. There wasn't an alternative available. Their society was completely dependent on it.
Still an ignorant public school slob.
As opposed to a plain, old, unschooled, ignorant slob?
Probably much sooner with less hatred and animosity. The level of vitriol created by Lincoln's war lasts to this day. Blacks, amongst others, paid the price for the ham handed approached to the secession of the South by the Illinois Butcher&$153.
Do you really think my GGGF on my mothers side who was a carpenter in Roanoke Va, who fought in the Army of No Va, owned no slaves, thought he was fighting to keep someone in slavery? If you really believe my GGGF would do that then I wish I could spit in your face. You are mixing cause and effect, typical reconstructed history.
Yep. In the same way my ancestors, who had certainly never seen a slave and had probably never seen a black person in their life, were fighting to end it. The South seceded and started a war. The motivation was to defend their institution of slavery from Republican promises to keep it from spreading. During the war your ancestors fought for their region of the country and mine fought for the U.S. Individual motivations don't change the underlying reasons for the war to begin with. And the fact that the North was not fighting to end slavery doesn't change the fact that its end was a happy outcome of the war.
You are mixing cause and effect, typical reconstructed history.
You're ignoring history completely.
If you really believe my GGGF would do that then I wish I could spit in your face.
And here I thought we had a real friendship developing. How disconcerting.
Sure it would. Hatred and animosity towards free blacks were pervasive in the South prior to the Civil War. Regardless of how it ended or when it ended that hatred and animosity would have continued. Restrictions likely would have been worse than Jim Crow, not better.
And before you get up on a hypocritical high horse, yeah, I know that conditions towards blacks weren't a whole lot better in the North either prior to or after the war. I'm not excusing it and I'm also not pretending that ending slavery in any way other than how it did end would have changed anything. People in the north were racists, by any definition of the term. People in the south, however, were no better or even worse.
Glad we agree.
You're one up on me. I can't imagine what could possibly constitute a good Southerner.
Damn, I knew I should have included that </sarcasm> tag. I'm dealing with a Blue-Stater.
What a joke, here is what really happened up there:
From the time of Lincoln's election in 1860, the Democratic Party had warned New York's Irish and German residents to prepare for the emancipation of slaves and the resultant labor competition when southern blacks would supposedly flee north. To these New Yorkers, the Emancipation Proclamation was confirmation of their worst fears. In March 1863, fuel was added to the fire in the form of a stricter federal draft law. All male citizens between twenty and thirty-five and all unmarried men between thirty-five and forty-five years of age were subject to military duty. The federal government entered all eligible men into a lottery. Those who could afford to hire a substitute or pay the government three hundred dollars might avoid enlistment. Blacks, who were not considered citizens, were exempt from the draft.
In the month preceding the July 1863 lottery, in a pattern similar to the 1834 anti-abolition riots, antiwar newspaper editors published inflammatory attacks on the draft law aimed at inciting the white working class. They criticized the federal government's intrusion into local affairs on behalf of the "nigger war." Democratic Party leaders raised the specter of a New York deluged with southern blacks in the aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation. White workers compared their value unfavorably to that of southern slaves, stating that "[we] are sold for $300 [the price of exemption from war service] whilst they pay $1000 for negroes." In the midst of war-time economic distress, they believed that their political leverage and economic status was rapidly declining as blacks appeared to be gaining power. On Saturday, July 11, 1863, the first lottery of the conscription law was held. For twenty-four hours the city remained quiet. On Monday, July 13, 1863, between 6 and 7 A.M., the five days of mayhem and bloodshed that would be known as the Civil War Draft Riots began.
You might want to do a little research before you make an asinine statement.
This kind of empty talk is thrown around here too lightly.
"Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the States are Sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again, when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denying that each State is a Sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever."
President Jefferson Davis.
I see that our little talk on intelligent, effective posting has continued to elude you. How do you expect anyone to regard you as anything other than a troll when you post crap like that?
If I do very little research then I'd be a Confederate supporter. I'm not saying that from the Northern side the war was fought to end slavery. It was fought, as Lincoln said time and again, to preserve the Union. Slavery was the motivation for the Southern side not the Northern one.
OEM started the crap. I guess you complained.
And when was that exactly?
The mean ol' Yankee started it? That's the best you can do?
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