Civil War

What if the Civil War never happened? If the North just let the South secede and the South discovered how much they really depended on the North.

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.Edited to add, this seems to refer to the US Civil War of 1864.This message has been edited by AdminJar, 05-10-2005 11:14 AM

The south would be a destitue agrarian third world nation. Southerners would be illigaly imagrating to the north. Mehnwhile the southern government would be inefective as it basicaly a conglomerate of bickering states.

As industrialization picked up in the North and more jobs became available, the African-American slaves would have deserted the plantations in droves. Slavery was illegal in Mexico also. The South would have been bleeding slaves in both directions.Slavery would have collapsed in the South from sheer economic necessity. The cost of maintaining a national police force just to keep the slaves "down on the farm" would have been prohibitive.(:raig

The ineffective gouvernment, stagnant economy, and general discontent of the populace creates a sufficient power vacume for charismatic, militant christian theocrats to take over. It's like a new taliban!

First, Texas would have been a part of the confederacy, placing the vast majority of the readily accessable oil reserves in North America in the Confederacy. There were also respectable coal reseves in Alabama. A theoretical Confederacy would have been well placed for a role in the at the time burgeoning industrial revolution.Also, the best deep water port on the east coast would have been in the confederacy. The products of the entire central continent are best moved by funneling them down the Mississippi and out through the port of New Orleans. That would have been a massive source of income as well as strategic advantage.As for a source of wealth to provide for the development of commerce and oil, the American south was at the time and for decades after the Civil War the world's main producer of cotton. This provided huge revenue and would for years to come after the Civil War.As technology advanced, slavery would have slowly died. Slavery is only economically viable when massive amounts of stoop labor is the only way to get something done. Otherwise, it's cheaper to hire some guys to work the machines and make them find their own housing and food.The only point on which you are possibly correct is one the divisive nature of the government. However, as wealth grows, history has shown a trend towards centralization of power, so I tend to think centralization of power would have happened in a Confederacy as it has in the actual USA.

Would the South then learn how to create and have its own industrial revolution at some point. True, the slaves would run but for the slaves kept, they would be made into factory workers but soon, crops and goods were later cheaper and better quality trades from Egypt, Jamaica and other countries.The main reason why the South did not have enough to sustain their position in the war with materials from a lack of exports. They would not have enough money to sustain their country because of that same lack of exports as well.But the South had already placed systems that would try to keep their slaves and if the rebellion rate was too high, wealthy individuals would always find a way to keep their slaves under control. The South would not be so desolate.The next question I am looking for is that if the South did find that their efforts were almost certainly hopeless, wouldn't they just go back into the Union until they learned enough to survive on its own only to secede again?Please remember that this is in the case that no Civil War ever happened.This message has been edited by Nikao, 05-10-2005 01:28 PMThis message has been edited by Nikao, 05-10-2005 01:31 PM {Edited to add blank lines between paragraphs. To all - Blank lines betwee paragraphs are a very good thing. Paragraph indentations (as Nikao did) to not work here. - Adminnemooseus}This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 05-10-2005 02:10 PM

No. No nation had it's own industrial revolution. It was an international trend to move to an industrial economy. The question should not be "would the south have it's own IR?" it should be "would the Confederacy have taken part in the IR?" The answer to that is yes. There was an educated upper class eager for new venues of wealth, a natural resource base, and geographical advantages for commerce. No. Large scale slavery for industrial purposes simply isn't economical in the long run. It is simple and logical. It costs X to maintain a slave. this includes housing, food, and a state mandated (and probably funded) system for maintaining those people in state of servitude, among other things. Free those people and pay them less then X and you're saving money. Even more importantly, as mechanization increases and one person can do the work of, say, five laborers, you can pay that one person much more then X and still be coming out ahead as well as getting a skilled worker making a better product. This holds for any industry. No, because the Confederacy was well placed to sustain itself and even prosper. I have yet to hear a good argument here to the contrary.

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No, because the Confederacy was well placed to sustain itself and even prosper. I have yet to hear a good argument here to the contrary.

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How could they have been setup to prosper. The trade routes are great but the problem is, everyone stopped trading with the South. All that was traded even during the actual Civil War were weapons, not food or goods but weapons and supplies.
Cloth production was later taken by Egypt and India while food was already being traded from Jamaica and Quebec to Britain, France and Spain. There was just no one to export crop and cloth trades out of the South anymore. They would have been forced to develop a system in which they would become a more industrial country or find someone to get them technologically up-to-date.
Oh Look! There is the Union right next door. Maybe they would have a helping hand since they wanted the Union to stay together anyways. they would have been more than willing to let the COnfederate states back into the Union.This message has been edited by Nikao, 05-10-2005 03:38 PM

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No. Large scale slavery for industrial purposes simply isn't economical in the long run. It is simple and logical. It costs X to maintain a slave. this includes housing, food, and a state mandated (and probably funded) system for maintaining those people in state of servitude, among other things.

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It is economical when the wealthy basically have control of the laws and the laws are changed to their own liking. It would cost more money for an indentured slave because indentured slaves required mantenance while slaves were considered property and therefore having the ability to be thrown out once used up. The South would have adjusted their laws to their own liking with no Union to control them.This message has been edited by Nikao, 05-10-2005 03:04 PM

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No. No nation had it's own industrial revolution. It was an international trend to move to an industrial economy.

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On top of that, I agree with the trend. That is what I sorta meant but you worded it better. ThanksThis message has been edited by Nikao, 05-10-2005 03:09 PM

Most certainly not true.Blockade running was big business for English shipping companies so the CSA had a really hard time getting them to bring over cheap things like weapons and ammo. Rather the blockade runners often brought luxury items because they could make more money that way being an exclusive source of such items.Also, often so much money went into the design and fabrication of blockade runners that the companies could not afford to be in the business of shipping bulk cheap items. If you got one of your expensive new steam powered ships caught by the blockade then the rest of your business better be able to account for that.Large leaps in speedy ship design with steam were made during the civil war just for the purposes of running Union blockades. Big business but very reluctant to ship the stuff the CSA actually needed.This message has been edited by Jazzns, 05-10-2005 01:18 PM

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FOX has a pretty good system they have cooked up. 10 mil people watch the show on the network, FOX. Then 5 mil, different people, tune into FOX News to get outraged by it. I just hope that those good, God fearing people at FOX continue to battle those morally bankrupt people at FOX.
-- Lewis Black, The Daily Show

Please remember that this topic is for the purpose if that there was no Civil War. Not that your point is incorrect but there is no blackade if there is no Civil War. Your entire point runs off of the Civil War happening.

If it had not been for the untimely death of Prince Albert, there is a high probablility that the war would not have happened or had it started, would have ended almost at once.If Prince Albert had lived the most likely outcome would have been either a Northern Surrender or an immediate cease fire followed by peace talks.The south would have been granted a franchise on cotton production, the cotton plantations of Egypt and India would likely have been put off for at least a generation. There would have been strengthed importation between Canada, the south and Great Britain. It's even possible that the south might have petitioned for a return to the Commonwealth of Nations.Great Britian and Canada and the Confederacy would have re-evaluated the balance of North America and in addition to Texas, the south might have annexed Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Nevada; while Canada annexed North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon and Alaska.California would have remained an extension of Baha and a Spanish possession. The North, surronded by much larger, much better connected Nations would have become a manufacturing backwater, a source of cheap goods and a third world nation.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Would there have been any religious changes during this time that the South and the North were seperated. With the split of this one country into two, the parties were split too werten't they? What effect would it be having a ,in today's terms, a Republican country and a Democratic country?