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The Annoyed Man wrote:.....but, but, but.....what about that racist Uncle Ted?

74novaman wrote:

C-dub wrote:
If they had won, the CSA would probably have experienced the same sort of issues that led the colonies to give up on the Articles of Confederation and draft the Constitution. They would probably have attempted to design a much weaker federal system, but one probably would have been instituted at some point by sheer necessity.

I have heard it posited that if the South had won the war, the result would be that the United States would certainly not be 1 entity, and probably would not have been 2 entities - North and South - even. These scholars/historians believe that the Unities States would in actuality have become many small, regional nation-states, much as has evolved in Europe. The result of that configuration would have been that no nation would then have existed that had the singular capability of opposing (and defeating) Germany and then Japan in World War II. The world as we currently know it would have a vastly different look about it.

The "road not taken" can never be truly forecast.

C-dub wrote:This might be the biggest "what if" we have discussed here. I think you are probably correct that even if the south had won and remained separate they would have eventually merged back again. The theory of pushing further south into Mexico is an interesting one. There are just so many variables.

There were some who wanted to claim the states of Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora, and Sinaloa, as well as the Baja peninsula, by force if necessary. Kind of like drawing a line from Brownsville across to Culiacan. Consider it a southern version of "54.40 or fight!" they felt that more territory should have come with Texas.

If Lee had followed Longstreet's advice at Gettysburg and disengaged, moved south between the Union Army and DC and had picked better ground to fight on or at least had fought a defensive battle at Gettysburg rather than an offensive one, he might have won. If he had defeated the Union army, Lincoln may not have been re-elected. And if that happened, the Union would have settled with the South. So while the Union had everything going for it, it is entirely conceivable that without Lincoln as President, the South would have "won".

I don't think the results would have overall been good for our history for many of the reasons already given.

stroo wrote:If Lee had followed Longstreet's advice at Gettysburg and disengaged, moved south between the Union Army and DC and had picked better ground to fight on or at least had fought a defensive battle at Gettysburg rather than an offensive one, he might have won. If he had defeated the Union army, Lincoln may not have been re-elected. And if that happened, the Union would have settled with the South. So while the Union had everything going for it, it is entirely conceivable that without Lincoln as President, the South would have "won".

I don't think the results would have overall been good for our history for many of the reasons already given.

"If" a frog had wings....

The sad part of the whole affair is the entire war could have been averted and slavery eliminated if anyone had looked at it from an economic perspective instead of a political one.

Slaves made little economic sense in an era when Irishman and Chinamen were hired to work on the railroads for cents per day. Obviously, there were no "benefit costs" on top of that for insurance, social security, or taxes. If one got killed or injured on the job, they were pushed out of the way and a new one hired. They were an expense, not an investment, so there was no need to protect one's investment.

A pre-war field hand was worth about $1,800 at auction. They were a valuable investment. If one got sick and died, that was a real tangible loss. (As a side effect, slaves received better food, housing and clothing than ordinary laborers because it was in the economic self interest of a slaveholder to protect their investment.) In comparison, post-war average costs for a southern farmhand ran about $5-6 a month. You could pay wages for 25 years for what the investment value of the slave was, or another way of looking at it was someone was getting about a 4% return on their slave investment.

If the government had stepped in and said they would purchase all slaves at the prevailing rate and spent that money on the slaves instead of war, it would have had the following effects:

- it would have cost less than the actual costs spent on the war.
- It would have avoided the economic losses incurred by removing 3.8 million men out of the labor force
- it would have avoided widespread property destruction, such as Sherman's March to the Sea
- it would have avoided roughly 600,000 combatant deaths
- it would have left the Southern plantation owner class with their accumulated wealth/capital -- simply converting the asset to a different form -- that would have led to stability and freed up huge capital pools for investment in industry in the South, and sparking massive economic growth.
- it would have lessened the social turmoil that resulted from the sudden emancipation of the slaves, which disrupted the established social and economic orders in the South, and potentially reduced the lingering problems of racial hatred that persist nearly 150 years after the war began.

Bottom line: there are vast social costs of war that could have been entirely avoided.

I have read that the reason for the war had more to do with states rights than ending slavery. From reading some of Lincoln's speeches made before the war I tend to believe it. Slavery seemed to be more of an emotional battle cry, kind of like "for the children" used now.

Yeah, the states' right to have slavery. The south doesn't want to admit to it, but that's what it was all about. Just look at how they refer to the war itself. They call it the war of northern aggression, but the south fired the first shots.

The north had their own political reasons for fighting the war and yes, ending slavery was part of it. But not simply for the egalitarian reason most think of and were taught in school...all of those freed slaves now became simply more low-paid laborers...and the north needed more and more laborers for their industrial buildup, especially post-war...millions of immigrants came to America to work in northern factories, but also millions of former slaves and the children of former slaves moved north to work, as well. TANSTAAFL...everything has costs involved, everything is tied back to money somehow. Its not evil, per se, just how things have worked, do work and will work. That is why socialism and communism are lies.

Heartland Patriot wrote:TANSTAAFL

I hate it when I have to look these things up.

Heartland Patriot wrote:all of those freed slaves now became simply more low-paid laborers...and the north needed more and more laborers for their industrial buildup, especially post-war...millions of immigrants came to America to work in northern factories, but also millions of former slaves and the children of former slaves moved north to work, as well.

A lot of that work was too dangerous to risk the life of a slave that cost a lot of money. They wanted cheap labor with no financial loss to the company when some percentage died. Reading about the way the railroads treated Chinese labor reveals the truth about Yankee "egalitarian" motivation in the 1800s.

gringo pistolero wrote:

Heartland Patriot wrote:all of those freed slaves now became simply more low-paid laborers...and the north needed more and more laborers for their industrial buildup, especially post-war...millions of immigrants came to America to work in northern factories, but also millions of former slaves and the children of former slaves moved north to work, as well.

A lot of that work was too dangerous to risk the life of a slave that cost a lot of money. They wanted cheap labor with no financial loss to the company when some percentage died. Reading about the way the railroads treated Chinese labor reveals the truth about Yankee "egalitarian" motivation in the 1800s.

Which is exactly why they wanted those folks freed...to widen that pool of bulk-type labor...easier to get folks to move a few hundred miles with the promise of a job than to get them to come over in ships, though they obviously did that, too. With very few machines at the time, compared with today, they needed a lot of people to accomplish those tasks. Even after steam engine machines came into use, they were big and bulky and a lot of the more precise work still got done by people. And lots of folks of all races and ethnicity lost their lives building this country up. I don't want anyone thinking I'm taking pot shots at anyone, just pointing out the realities of the need of bulk labor at that time in our history.

Jumping Frog is perfectly correct in that it would have been much less expensive to use compensative emancipation. While some of Lincoln's speeches and votes, before becoming president didn't oppose slavery he was against it and actually suggested paying to end slavery.

States rights were a big issue at the time. Lincoln and others wanted a strong federal government and supporters of that have been working toward it since. The biggest step being having senators being elected by popular vote. State governments lost most of their representation and power in Washington at that time.

And now we know the rest of the story.

C-dub wrote:. . . but the south fired the first shots.

According to the northern oppressors' version of history.