kate jack

I think it possibly would have left our country divided in two. I think another war would have occurred at some later point as well.

I'm not sure if slavery would still exist or not because it's a much more taboo thing for a well developed nation to do now.

Or I think there's a good chance we would have ended up like Europe - smaller countries on one land mass.

What does everyone else think?

robot_parade

I think (hope) that slavery would still be dead by now, though it probably would have taken much longer in the south. I also agree with the idea that the US would be broken up into smaller countries - especially the west coast.

filtherton

Every day would be like an episode of the Dukes of Hazard.

The_Jazz

Harry Turtledove would be out of a job.

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ASU2003

As a northerner currently working outdoors in the south (some physical labor involved, 7 days a week, 10-16 hours a day for the past two weeks), I have a new appreciation for what the slaves went through and why the white masters didn't want to do the work.

I'm not sure what America would look like or what would have changed in the nation's history. I would think that the south would have become it's own country if they would ave won and the north would have had it's land. It would have been a race to colonize and claim the west. I'm also not sure how cars wold have modified the underground railroad, and I would bet that there would be a lot of people trying to get into the north. It would be interesting to see if a fence would have been put up, but I'm not sure which side would have done it.

I did see a stars and bars flag down here though on Highway 65 in Alabama. And you can still buy them in stores here.

Baraka_Guru

Canada would have annexed Washington, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and/or Connecticut.

Did I leave anything out? California, maybe?

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Bear Cub

I bet cigarettes would be dirt cheap.

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filtherton

I bet the value of a human life would be dirt cheap.

Seaver

Slavery would have probably been outlawed in the next 10 years had the South won. General Lee felt that slavery was an abomination unto God. He was, and would have continued to be, the hero and most powerful man in the South (NOT Davis). Had he delivered victory, he probably would have used his clout to eliminate it as soon as possible during the reconstruction.

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Fotzlid

If the south had won, the country would probably look similar to what it is today. The biggest differences would be in societal changes. We'd probably be stuck in the late 40's early 50's era of racial indifference/intolerance and the male/female roles in regards to family and society.
As the south was an agrarian society, our multi-billionaires would probably be land barons instead of CEO's.
I also think religion would be even more prevalent in society than it is now.

Charlatan

Is that even possible? Once you are out of the urban centres religion is already prevalent in the US.

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ratbastid

There's an amazing film called CSA: The Confederate States of America. It's a "documentary" about the history of the states after the South wins the Civil War, conquering all the way up to Washington DC and taking the White House.

There's a trailer for it at IMDB right here: IMDb Video: CSA: Confederate States of America

Pretty amazing piece of work. It has Lincoln being smuggled out of DC in blackface, escorted to the Canadian border by Harriet Tubman. It follows history up to the present day, including some really shocking stuff that takes off from real history. Did you know that the confederates had a plan to conquer Central and South America after their victory? In the movie they do it, and sugar replaces cotton as the main confederate cash crop--and needless to say, both the demand and availability of slaves skyrockets.

Fotzlid

Sure. Something along the line of Muslim states where religious law over rides civil law and clergy hold public office.

djtestudo

The interesting thing (well, one of them) about the situation in the South was how the aristocratic minority managed to convince the lower classes that the system in place

1) was what the founders originally planned and

2) was the only thing keeping them from destruction, economically and socially.

I think that someone would have come along and led some sort of revolution in a victorious Confederacy to both free the slaves and take down the aristocrats.

Maybe we end up with the People's Confederate States of America in the end.

*snickers*

Did I forget to add the part where time-travelers would have supplied the South with AK-47s, radios and other modern weapons to win in the first place?

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ASU2003

I can't believe I'd never thought of this situation before. I've only looked at things with the north winning.

But I want to see this movie. It looks interesting.

TheNasty

The south wouldn't be statistically last in practically every category concerning education, health and wealth.

The North would have continued to use their slaves, sorry "indentured servants", to increase their industrial capacity. Technology would have moved to the south, along with industrial centers, and slavery would have become obsolete.

Something to research and consider is, in my opinion, the North wanted the South to be agriculturally centered. The North wanted industry to sprout there, while the south provided cheap raw materials. Wealth comes from producing goods, not producing raw materials, especially during that time period. To think the war was solely about slavery is extremely short cited.

The effects of the Civil War are still being felt today in the South. People seem to have this notion in their head that back then there was a magical line splitting the United States in half, on one side of the line civilized thespians resided who loathed slavery on the grounds of morality. On the other side bloodthirsty savages resided whom had no care for human life, whose only care was wealth, and land! Don't believe me? the idea still exists today, only slightly changed. The south is full of redneck folks who cling to their guns and religion, and take pride in being ignorant!

The war was more about power and wealth, keeping it centered in the N/E. To believe the country was thrown into war over slavery alone is shortsighted and ignores history. What if the south had won is an interesting question and deserves to be taken past "we'd still have slaves!".

ottopilot

Remote Appalachia would still be unto its own ... as it is now. A land with a long history of fierce independence, where bootlegging is still big and marijuana is a multi-million dollar cash crop. A place where organized crime, gangs, and a majority of law enforcement won't dare tread for fear of disappearing.

Towns are generally more socially modern, but the majority of Appalachia is still very remote. No electricity or basic utilities. Not a place to get lost.

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Xazy

Obama would be working a tobacco field now.

Poppinjay

Slavery was already on the way out. The ruling class sold the war to southerners as a war for the right to operate freely, without government interference. Otherwise, most southerners didn't give a shit about slavery.

In the immediate years following slavery, blacks held office, and owned their own farms. When that started, measures put in by local and state governments (with quiet approval from the US government) put a stop to that and placed blacks in second class citizenship for the next hundred years.

Civil rights in this country is a national shame, not a southern shame.

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Bill O'Rights

True.

The war was all about States Rights. The fuse that blew the whole powder keg was what the South viewed as unfair taxes and tariffs imposed upon them by the northern states.

In fact, slavery really wasn't much of an issue until Lincoln made in an issue via the Emancipation Proclomation. Which, by the way, only freed slaves in states that were in open rebellion, and threfore, technically, not under his jurisdiction. He left the slaves in the border states alone, preventing the shift of more states (and their resources) into the fledgling CSA. Politically, the Emancipatiion Proclomation prevented official recognition of the CSA by Great Britain and France, who were sympathetic to the Southern Cause. More for their cotton than anything else...but still. Without that European support, the South was doomed to lose the war. It was a tactic, and a successful one at that, employed by Lincoln.

Do some serious research into the 16th President. You'll find him an ass of major proportions. He really makes George W. Bush look like an Eagle Scout by comparison. While he is revered today, he was reviled, both North and South, in his own time. Only his untimely death, and subsequent press induced martyrdom, has elevated him to his current demi-god status.

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djtestudo

It's interesting. The first thing everyone learns about the Civil War is how the South just wanted to keep their slaves while Abraham Lincoln fought to end slavery.

Then, you dig down to the next level of history, and you see that the South felt that their rights were being trampled by the North, and that Lincoln's actions during the war bear that out. Plus, how he really didn't care about slavery but saving the Union and used things like the Emancipation Proclaimation as the means to that end.

Then, however, you dig down to the next level and you get to how all decisions and arguments and questions about states-rights in the South came back to slavery, and more specifically the South losing political power to an anti-slave North. Also, you get to Lincoln's desire more than anything to simply end the fighting and bring the South back into the fold as friendly states, which would have happened if that stain on the page of humanity with the name of Booth hadn't killed him and unleashed the vengeful Radical Republicans and Reconstruction.

The thing to remember in all history is that it is naturally biased and flawed, just like the people who are involved. Lincoln set America on the course to free the slaves, but did it as a way to undermine the South instead of for real moral reasons. He suspended constitutional rights in many (probably far too many) cases, but with the goal of ending the bloodshed as soon as possible with the best chance of victory. You can do the same thing with just about any figure in American history (with the exception of the aforementioned stain, of course).

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flstf

If the south had won the war I believe that the United States would be several different countries by now. After the war states realized that they would not be allowed to break away from the union unless they did it by force. Before the war I think most states thought it was their right to leave and go it alone if they elected to.

Atreides88

I think I've seen this and I about had a fit when I did. Frankly, whoever wrote it was an imbecil and did not understand the nuances of antebellum Southern life. The premise focused far too much on the racial divide(i.e. racial superiority) that really wasn't all that prevalent until Reconstruction. Much of the Ku Klux Klan and the real racial divides were created by policies enacted during Reconstruction. The Klan originally had black members and was meant as a rebellious movement to keep the Yankee carpetbaggers and the like out of the South. Read Born Fighting by James Webb.

Also, the notion that slaves were slaves because they were somehow inferior is overblown. Hell, freedmen owned slaves, and 80% of the slave population of the South were owned by about 20% of the white population, mainly rich plantation owners in the tidewater regions of the South. There were more poor white farmers who couldn't afford slaves than there were rich landed gentry. Slaves were the backbone of the agricultural society, and had it not been for the cotton gin, the practice would probably have been done away with due to it not being economically viable.

As for what would happen had the South won, more than likely we'd have had two nations, one centered in the North with a stronger central government, and one in the South with a looser confederation of states, more in line with the Articles of Confederation than with the Constitution. This based on the fact that the War of Northern Aggression was more of a war of independence for the South than it was a civil war battling for control of the country. There's a wonderful little work of fiction on this very subject called .

EDIT: A quick guide to flags of the CSA as this topic is a pet peeve of mine.

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roachboy

you can't separate the civil war from a war over which type of economy would be dominant, which form of exploitation would dominate---wage slavery as over against legal slavery---any more than you can separate it from questions of state's rights.

none of the claims that slavery "would have died out on its own" mean anything. when the yes men advanced that argument a couple years ago, they did so as a satire. the sensibility they were satirizing was the one that makes such a claim seem reasonable, as if capitalism was somehow not involved with the slave trade itself (false) as if capitalism was not involved with the plantation system of production (false) as if that system represented some kind of atavism (false) waiting to be rescued from itself by the Heroic White Knight of capitalism.

but what's most ridiculous about this is the severing of the civil war from reconstruction.
if you look at that period, the south did win.

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ottopilot

If the South had won the civil war, I would be Michael Fred Phelps.

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Atreides88

I beg to differ. The South is still feeling the effects of Reconstruction. Reconstruction did more to harm the South than the war did. How do you suppose that the South profited from Reconstruction?

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djtestudo

I don't think they did from the process itself, but one could argue that they "won" by getting the military to withdraw and the government to essentially leave them alone for the next 80 years.

Of course, Reconstruction was just about the worst possible outcome of the Civil War for the South (though I'm reading a book of "what-if" essays that includes an even worse scenario had Andrew Johnson been assassinated with Lincoln as planned and Radical Republicans been even more in-charge then they already were).

Really it all goes back to that stain on humanity I mentioned earlier.

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Necrosis

Someone (actually two someones) have done their homework. The history book position that Northerners left their homes and got shot up because they wanted to free slaves is preposterous. The war was a money grab by the North, AFTER the South was producing enough slaves that there was no money to be had by Northerners importing more slaves.

It's not difficult to look up old laws barring freed slaves from settling in many northern states. Or prominent northerners who continued to own slaves after the war.

Kudos regarding the info about Robert E. Lee, too.

Poppinjay

Bumped to deter discussion of the war from invading Shani Faye's CSA thread.

Like Sherman invaded Atlanta. Which brings up an interesting point, President Jimmy Carter used to get incensed when bands would play "Marching Through Georgia" in his honor. It's about the northern occupation of Atlanta, which did not end well.

If an American president can have views of the CW as the War of Northern Aggression, is it hanging on to an old feud, or proper cultural subtext of our history?

Any questions, post them here.

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inBOIL

It's an incomplete view of the war from one side that complements the more commonly taught incomplete view from the other side.

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Bill O'Rights

Depends on who you're talking to. I'm a history buff. But, there are those out there, still to this day, that are still fighting that war...in their own way. I used to do Civil War re-enacting, several years ago. The further south, and the more remote, that some of these events were held...the more the "true sons of the south" came out. 143 years after the fact, and to some of these guys it might just as well have been last year.

In so far as Jimmy Carter bristling over "Marching Through Georgia"...I don't blame him. Inappropriate, to say the least. While it's a fun and jaunty tune, it is, after all, an old song glorifying the devastation of his home state, at the hands of Sherman's army. Clearly, someone didn't listen to the words (other than Georgia) when they made that selection.

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Daval

This trailer is not viewable in Canada. sounds pretty cool

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Deltona Couple

Interesting idea here: If the South had one. But one think that nobody is taking into account when trying to figure out where the US would be today, is foreign influence. Think about this. There are 2 possibilities: One. The south wins, and has a total takeover of the entire US, and two, there is an eventual cease fire, and the US is forever divided into NorthUS and SouthUS.

Assuming a total takeover, IF the US were to be able to progress as it had normally, what kind of involvement would we have had in WW1? WW2? Korea? Vietnam? Assuming that the Southern controlled government was still of the "confederation" type, I would liken it to a "prosperity by control" situation. I honestly think that a Southern controlled US may have not even become involved at all. Remember that Woodrow Wilson only won victory in 1916 by promising to stay out of the war. If someone else had been in office, our involvement could have gone either way, forever changing the course of WW1, and how the European countries would have ended the war....It's alot to take in if you consider all the possibilities. It may even have been possible that without US involvement, a total takeover of Europe could have occured, and then the US might have become a new target.

Now what if the US had separated into two different countries? With the above scenario, we could have faced a possible total takeover from a foreign government, for we may not have developed into the superpower that we are.

Just some food for thought here....

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Lindy

I love to read. I probably read a couple of dozen books a year. How do I have time to do that? Well, I hardly ever watch TV. In fact, I think TV sucks! But I digress.
I was reminded of this thread when I chanced upon some of Harry Turtledove's alternate history novels at a used book sale last week. I had read Blood and Iron a few years ago when my brother left it in my car during a visit. Nothing quite like jumping in in the middle of a series. Now I have How Few Remain and American Front so I can restart from the beginning.

One of the consequences of the Northern victory is that every post in this thread refers to the conflict as the Civil War. A lot of Southerners will still call it "The War Between the States." Regardless of slavery and other moral or economic issues most Southerners simply did not view the United States of America as "one nation, indivisible." They thought they could just take their marbles and leave. Abe Lincoln said "No, you can't." Turtledove's series starts with Lincoln not being able to hold the country together. Interesting.

Lindy

Lucifer

the value of a human life is dirt cheap, don't you watch the news?

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Tusko

this made me chuckle for some reason.

tfp lacks (which is good sometimes) alot of the LOL I HAS INTERNETS style that most other boards have. so it's kinda strange when i see typical-internet style responses, but in a more tfp way.