Could the Confederacy have won the US Civil War? What might then have happened?

[lpetrich]

A favorite alternate-history discussion is what if the Confederacy had won the US Civil War.

First, however, could it have plausibly won? I doubt it. The Confederacy was not as industrialized as the Union, and and it had a big slave population to keep under its thumb. So the most that it would likely have achieved would be to survive long enough for the Union to get tired of fighting. That's how some other wars have been resolved, notably the the wars of the US in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

What might have helped? Success in diplomatic efforts in Europe, I think. Like getting Britain to support it and send it military supplies. That would actually be plausible, since Britain and the US had often been at loggerheads over northern and western North America. Britain wanted to protect Canada from being "liberated" by the US, for instance. Back then, France was Britain's great enemy, so France would have supported the Union. So even then, the Union may have won the war, with France trying to keep Britain from having too much influence.

But let's return to the scenario of a stalemated war. The Union and the Confederacy may then have competed for the western plains and the mountain states, and I think that the Confederacy would likely have gotten New Mexico and Arizona, while the Union would likely have gotten all the rest.

Then the question of how World War I might have turned out. It originated from European power politics, so it would likely have still happened in this timeline. But with the United States divided, it would likely have had much less influence on the war, and the war would likely have ended up stalemated, at least in western Europe. Germany and Austria would likely have gotten a lot of territory from the former Russian Empire -- Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia -- and would likely have set up puppet rulers of them. However, Germany may end up wearing out its welcome there, and Russia may have felt very threatened, setting the stage for more wars.

I think that monarchy would have continued to have a lot of prestige in this timeline. Though the Tsars would have been gone, Germany, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire would likely have kept their monarchs.

The Middle East? I'm not sure how much of the Ottoman Empire might have survived, but I think that it would have gotten seriously weakened, with Arabs successfully revolting in what is now Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel/Palestine. As to the latter territory, Jewish settlers were gradually arriving, as in our timeline, hoping to have some independence and to live in some place where they would not be hated by the people around them. But I think that as in our timeline, they would still have been hated by the Arabs.

Adolf Hitler? His rise to power was likely a historical accident. With Germany not humiliated, he would have stayed a painter of landscape pictures. But he may have become a minor celebrity for ranting at length about how the Jews were to blame for this or that problem.

I'll leave off here.

 

[repoman]

there is an interesting documentary (mockumentary?) from 2004 called

C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0389828/



But seeing the thumbnail of the video now, there is no way in hell that a slave holding CSA would have landed on the moon.

Also, the fact that oil was found in in 1859 would have been a deathblow to massive slavery eventually.

 

[Bronzeage]

Harry Turtledove has a series of alternative history novels all based on the idea that early Confederate victories forced the North to concede the succession. The last one I read had the Union and the Confederacy drawn into the European conflict of WW1. This led to trench warfare in Ohio.

 

[steve_bnk]

The South had a window of opportunitywhile Lincoln went through incompetent generals. McClellan did nothave initiative and the will to fight. He was a politician.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_B._McClellan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War#Eastern_theater

Once General Grant was in charge, itwas over.

It was also the first modern technological war. Trains were critical. Electric long distancecommunications. Keyboard based communications devices were firstused in the war.

The Southin the long could not matchthe industry of the North and the attition.

Could lee have prevailed at Gettysburg?A never ending debate.

The South might have flanked the Northon high ground but for the initiative of a Northern officer whocharged downhill against a larger force. Battle of Little Round Top.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Round_Top#Battle_of_Little_Round_Top

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_gettysburg

Mechanized arming technology, gasengines, and steam power were coming. Slavery would have started to become too costly by the end of century.

The Confederacy would have failed. Ithad nothing to add to the cotton economy. The black-whitedemographics would have been problematic. The British ended upopposing the slave trade. Mexico was abolitionist.

A Confederacy with slavery would havebeen isolated given the way Europe was going.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline#1800.E2.80.931849

 

[Horatio Parker]

The South could only have won by the North's war weariness. This was part of the reason for Lee's raids into the north in '62 and '63. The other was food, as the Army of Northern Virginia was the worst supplied army on either side.

They never had a chance militarily. In the east, there was an appearance of stalemate, due to the geography and inferior Union generalship, but everywhere else the South lost steadily despite occasional local victories such as Chickamauga.

 

[lpetrich]

I agree that the South would not have had much of a chance, that its only chance of "victory" was the North losing interest in fighting.

The South was also not that great at coalition building. Its politicians cared mostly about slavery, slavery, slavery, slavery, slavery. That was a big issue for them, and they tried to impose their will on the North before the war. South Carolina's politicians in their declaration of secession even complained about how unhelpful various Northern states were in catching escaped slaves, demanding proof of ownership and the like. They could have tried to form a coalition against New England as a region of annoying self-righteous busybodies, but they didn't try.

White Southerners in areas without many slaves were not very eager to fight for the Confederacy, and some of them seceded or tried to secede. Western Virginians succeed, though eastern Tennesseeans failed, and I don't know if northern Alabamans ever tried. The Confederate government stationed troops in eastern Tennessee and northern Alabama to keep those areas in line.

Why Abraham Lincoln Loved Infographics : The New Yorker -- a famous "slave map" showing density of slaves in various places. The most pro-Confederate areas had lots of slaves, while the least pro-Confederate areas had relatively few slaves, and Lincoln hoped that he could get allies in the latter areas.

 

[dockeen]

How would a Lincoln assassination earlier in the war have impacted events?

 

[Tom Sawyer]

How would a Lincoln assassination earlier in the war have impacted events?

More vampires around. Wouldn't have helped anyone.

The South could never have taken the North, their only strategy was to keep the war going on long enough for the North to give up and concede the territory. After that, they'd likely have fractured into their own little countries as opposed to having the Confederacy tell them what to do. Then the North and Mexico would have gobbled them up one at a time.

 

[bilby]

A favorite alternate-history discussion is what if the Confederacy had won the US Civil War.

First, however, could it have plausibly won? I doubt it. The Confederacy was not as industrialized as the Union, and and it had a big slave population to keep under its thumb. So the most that it would likely have achieved would be to survive long enough for the Union to get tired of fighting. That's how some other wars have been resolved, notably the the wars of the US in Vietnam and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

What might have helped? Success in diplomatic efforts in Europe, I think. Like getting Britain to support it and send it military supplies. That would actually be plausible, since Britain and the US had often been at loggerheads over northern and western North America. Britain wanted to protect Canada from being "liberated" by the US, for instance. Back then, France was Britain's great enemy, so France would have supported the Union. So even then, the Union may have won the war, with France trying to keep Britain from having too much influence.

But let's return to the scenario of a stalemated war. The Union and the Confederacy may then have competed for the western plains and the mountain states, and I think that the Confederacy would likely have gotten New Mexico and Arizona, while the Union would likely have gotten all the rest.

Then the question of how World War I might have turned out. It originated from European power politics, so it would likely have still happened in this timeline. But with the United States divided, it would likely have had much less influence on the war, and the war would likely have ended up stalemated, at least in western Europe. Germany and Austria would likely have gotten a lot of territory from the former Russian Empire -- Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia -- and would likely have set up puppet rulers of them. However, Germany may end up wearing out its welcome there, and Russia may have felt very threatened, setting the stage for more wars.

I think that monarchy would have continued to have a lot of prestige in this timeline. Though the Tsars would have been gone, Germany, Austria, and the Ottoman Empire would likely have kept their monarchs.

The Middle East? I'm not sure how much of the Ottoman Empire might have survived, but I think that it would have gotten seriously weakened, with Arabs successfully revolting in what is now Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel/Palestine. As to the latter territory, Jewish settlers were gradually arriving, as in our timeline, hoping to have some independence and to live in some place where they would not be hated by the people around them. But I think that as in our timeline, they would still have been hated by the Arabs.

Adolf Hitler? His rise to power was likely a historical accident. With Germany not humiliated, he would have stayed a painter of landscape pictures. But he may have become a minor celebrity for ranting at length about how the Jews were to blame for this or that problem.

I'll leave off here.

The influence of the US on WWI was tiny; by the time the US declared war, the French and British defeat of Germany on the Western Front was inevitable. The really HUGE impact that the absence of US troops would have had on Europe would have been the delay in transmission of the Spanish Flu to Europe; It would never have gotten the misnomer 'Spanish' as its American origin would be obvious, and in the days before mass intercontinental travel, might even have been contained to the Americas, saving millions of lives.

The much more noticeable impact of a more divided North America would have been on WWII, where US involvement was critical in both the European and Pacific theatres; the Japanese may never have bombed Pearl Harbour if they could have bypassed US sanctions by dealing with the Confederate States, and given that the smaller US would have been seen as less of a threat to their Pacific interests. Certainly without US opposition, the Japanese Empire would have had a very good chance of successfully occupying Australia and possibly India (with German help on the NW Frontier, after their victory in Russia).

Without the Lend-Lease program (or with a much reduced version of it), the USSR would almost certainly have fallen to Hitler, and the UK couldn't have held out against a German invasion once their divisions in the east were available for redeployment; a German invasion of Britain in 1945 or 1946 would have been a real possibility.

Given that the CSA likely couldn't have won without foreign support, the Harry Turtledove scenario of WWI being fought in part on American soil seems fairly plausible, although the actual relations between the European powers were so complex, it is hard to tell who would have sided with whom - after all, in the 1860s a war in Europe with Britain on the same side as France would have seemed rather unlikely.

Alternatively the CSA might have won by the use of AK-47s supplied by time-travellers from the AWB

 

[steve_bnk]

The North was politically fractured andnot stable. Lincoln was not universally liked, I've looked at some ofthe political cartoons of the time. At one point he had to enter the capitol at night under cover.

His political greatness isnot that he held the Union together ad freed slaves, it was his political skill holding the North together during thewar.

If Washington had been seriously threatened the Northmight have gone into chaos even rebellion. Renumber Lincoln suspended habeas corpus. It was not a given that the North would hold together. A less able POTUS and it couldhave gone other ways.

The North was far from unified.


http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2001/11/lincolns_crackdown.html


'...On April 19, 20,000 Confederate sympathizers in Baltimore tried to stop Union troops from traveling from one train station to another en route to Washington, causing a riot. So on April 27 Lincoln suspended the habeas corpus privilege on points along the Philadelphia-Washington route. That meant Union generals could arrest and detain without trial anyone in the area who threatened "public safety."...

Several times during the war, Lincolnor his Cabinet officers issued orders suspending the writ. The firstcame early in his presidency. Lincoln had been in office for barely amonth when Confederate troops attacked the federal garrison at FortSumter in April 1861, starting the Civil War. One of his immediateconcerns was how to keep an unobstructed route between Washington,D.C., and the North. He worried that if Maryland joined Virginia andseceded from the Union, the nation's capital would be stranded amidhostile states. On April 19, 20,000 Confederate sympathizers inBaltimore tried to stop Union troops from traveling from one trainstation to another en route to Washington, causing a riot. So onApril 27 Lincoln suspended the habeas corpus privilege on pointsalong the Philadelphia-Washington route. That meant Union generalscould arrest and detain without trial anyone in the area whothreatened "public safety.

Controversy followed. The mostexplosive incident centered on John Merryman, a Marylander arrestedfor insurrectionary activities. Summarily jailed, Merryman petitionedfor a habeas corpus writ, which Chief Justice Roger Taney granted.But the commanding officer at Fort McHenry, where Merryman was held,refused to release the prisoner, citing Lincoln's edict. With thearmy loyal to Lincoln, Taney couldn't enforce his order and railedagainst the president while Merryman stewed in jail for seven moreweeks. After being freed, he was never tried.

The Merryman case and others like itignited a debate over Lincoln's actions. Democrats argued they wereunconstitutional. Taney noted that Article 1 of the Constitution,where habeas corpus is discussed, deals exclusively withcongressional powers, meaning that Congress alone can authorize theprivilege's suspension. Although correct, Taney's argument framed thedebate around a legalistic and secondary issue, that of congressionalversus presidential power. It skirted the question of whether thesituation warranted a suspension of habeas corpus at all. Thus whenin March 1863 Congress passed the Habeas Corpus Act, effectivelyendorsing Lincoln's actions, civil libertarians were stripped oftheir main argument. (Taney also criticized Merryman's detention,noting that civilians aren't subject to military justice—an issueI'll get to next week.).

I think the political near chaos we have today at the federal level is probably a good analogy, withLincoln as a president who cold lead in the middle of it all.

 

[boneyard bill]

Actually, it was a close call. Had Lee sent re-enforcements to the Chattenooga area a lot earlier, the Union campaign into Georgia might have been delayed considerably. McClellan was running against Lincoln, and his main campaign issue was a negotiated peace with the South. Most political observers thought, in the summer of '64 that Lincoln would be defeated. This seems to have included Lincoln himself.

But in September of '64 Atlanta fell to Sherman. That made it clear to the Northern electorate that the South was doomed. If the South had held out longer at Chattenooga, they might have kept Atlanta until after the election. As it was, Lee did send re-enforcements, but they arrived too late to do much good.

Any consideration of the effects on WW I are entirely speculative. We cannot know what would have happened if the South had seceded. There were still territorial disputes and many feared that if the South seceded, neither the Confederacy, nor the Union, would have held together. In fact, that issue was Lincoln's main selling point to Northerners. It wasn't about slavery, Lincoln insisted, it was about keeping the Union together. That the main theme of the Gettysburg Address, and even his in his second inaugural when the end of slavery was assured, he insisted that it was necessary for the preservation of the Union.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Or if Hood hadn't replaced Johnston during the Atlanta campaign.

Or if Bedford Forrest had been sent against Sherman's supply lines.

All are possibilities.

Even if Atlanta had not fallen, Sheridan had destroyed resistance in the Shenandoah Valley and neutralized it as a source of supply. Lee was bottled up in Petersburg. That may have been enough positive news to ensure Lincoln's reelection.

 

[boneyard bill]

Or if Hood hadn't replaced Johnston during the Atlanta campaign.

Or if Bedford Forrest had been sent against Sherman's supply lines.

All are possibilities.

Even if Atlanta had not fallen, Sheridan had destroyed resistance in the Shenandoah Valley and neutralized it as a source of supply. Lee was bottled up in Petersburg. That may have been enough positive news to ensure Lincoln's reelection.

I won't dispute that. But Atlanta did fall, and that fall could probably could have been delayed had Lee sent re-enforcements earlier. But the South was definitely losing by the fall of '64, and Lee was hard-pressed to defend Richmond.

So one can't say anything with any definiteness. You even have the problem that by the time of Lincoln's Second Inaugural the war was virtually over. So if McClelland had won the election, what kind of peace would he have left to negotiate? Primarily the South's surrender.

However, we probably would not have gotten the 14th amendment which prohibited slavery. Lincoln's Emancipation freed slaves, but it did not make slavery illegal.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Or if Hood hadn't replaced Johnston during the Atlanta campaign.

Or if Bedford Forrest had been sent against Sherman's supply lines.

All are possibilities.

Even if Atlanta had not fallen, Sheridan had destroyed resistance in the Shenandoah Valley and neutralized it as a source of supply. Lee was bottled up in Petersburg. That may have been enough positive news to ensure Lincoln's reelection.

I won't dispute that. But Atlanta did fall, and that fall could probably could have been delayed had Lee sent re-enforcements earlier. But the South was definitely losing by the fall of '64, and Lee was hard-pressed to defend Richmond.

So one can't say anything with any definiteness. You even have the problem that by the time of Lincoln's Second Inaugural the war was virtually over. So if McClelland had won the election, what kind of peace would he have left to negotiate? Primarily the South's surrender.

However, we probably would not have gotten the 14th amendment which prohibited slavery. Lincoln's Emancipation freed slaves, but it did not make slavery illegal.

McClellan was a war Democrat.

FWIW, Wikipedia suggests that it was Fremont who decided the issue by dropping his challenge to Lincoln. Without a divided Republican Party, McClellan was doomed.

 

[rjh01]

The influence of the US on WWI was tiny; by the time the US declared war, the French and British defeat of Germany on the Western Front was inevitable.

Actually this statement is not true. In 1917 Russia signed a peace treaty with Germany. This freed up many troops to fight in France. In the beginning of 1918 the Germans were advancing. They were only stopped by large numbers of fresh American troops. With these the Allies could then start to advance and regain all the land lost earlier in the war.

 

[bilby]

The influence of the US on WWI was tiny; by the time the US declared war, the French and British defeat of Germany on the Western Front was inevitable.

Actually this statement is not true. In 1917 Russia signed a peace treaty with Germany. This freed up many troops to fight in France. In the beginning of 1918 the Germans were advancing. They were only stopped by large numbers of fresh American troops. With these the Allies could then start to advance and regain all the land lost earlier in the war.

Nope. No one was going anywhere on the Western Front, least of all the Germans, regardless of the numbers of men they threw into the meat grinder. The Germans collapsed because they were out of materiel, due to the Royal Navy blockade; and because of new technologies and tactics - particularly the introduction of tanks, which the Germans could not build in sufficient numbers to make a difference due to the aforementioned lack of materiel.

The result was not changed by US intervention. The German attacks in the west after the Russian revolution were a last gasp attempt to break the stalemate, but were never going to be successful, any more than all the previous 'big pushes' by either side.

 

[boneyard bill]

Or if Hood hadn't replaced Johnston during the Atlanta campaign.

Or if Bedford Forrest had been sent against Sherman's supply lines.

All are possibilities.

Even if Atlanta had not fallen, Sheridan had destroyed resistance in the Shenandoah Valley and neutralized it as a source of supply. Lee was bottled up in Petersburg. That may have been enough positive news to ensure Lincoln's reelection.

I won't dispute that. But Atlanta did fall, and that fall could probably could have been delayed had Lee sent re-enforcements earlier. But the South was definitely losing by the fall of '64, and Lee was hard-pressed to defend Richmond.

So one can't say anything with any definiteness. You even have the problem that by the time of Lincoln's Second Inaugural the war was virtually over. So if McClelland had won the election, what kind of peace would he have left to negotiate? Primarily the South's surrender.

However, we probably would not have gotten the 14th amendment which prohibited slavery. Lincoln's Emancipation freed slaves, but it did not make slavery illegal.

McClellan was a war Democrat.

FWIW, Wikipedia suggests that it was Fremont who decided the issue by dropping his challenge to Lincoln. Without a divided Republican Party, McClellan was doomed.

There's really no end to the "what if's" that could be put forward.

 

[ideologyhunter]

What I find most fascinating is the idea of the Confederacy proceeding as a slave state into the 20th Century -- which would have happened, although it would have been very tough going. The crazies would have become even more entrenched in racial ideology; the borders would become their national obsession; the underground railroad would have operated openly above Mason Dixon. Knowing how utterly backward the Southern politicians were, into the 1960s, how primitive conditions were for blacks in the deep South of 50 years back, and how racism was in full, undisguised ascendancy, they would have blundered on until the economic costs were devastating. It would have been a closed society, telling itself a glorified legend of the blood sacrifice made by the war generation to preserve the Southern Way of Life. (There was an interesting low-budget film done in mock-documentary style on this theme -- called, I think, C.S.A.)

 

[Bomb#20]

However, we probably would not have gotten the 14th amendment which prohibited slavery. Lincoln's Emancipation freed slaves, but it did not make slavery illegal.

That was the 13th Amendment.

There's really no end to the "what if's" that could be put forward.

What if the Confederacy hadn't attacked Fort Sumter in the first place? Could they have won without fighting? What would have happened if they'd simply tolerated the U.S. presence and gone about their secessionist lives, with the populace and state governments just ignoring any orders from the federal judges in their midst? If they hadn't started a shooting war first, would the North have had the political will to do so?

 

[Sarpedon]

I don't think there was any real chance of a southern victory. Historians say that the north won with one arm behind its back. If the southerners did better, the other arm would have come out. The south fought a total war, the north kept most of its comforts. Industry, food production and railroads were far superior in the north. Education and innovation were also better in the north. The North invented technological marvels like the Monitor, while the best the south could do was the Hunley.

Southern leadership was also poor. On paper, Davis could have been expected to be a better wartime leader than Lincoln, but in practice, he failed in his most important tasks; inspiring the nation, appointing the proper people to the proper positions, and guiding towards a good overall strategy. Lincoln bungled with his generals, but so did Davis, and while Lincoln eventually found the ones he wanted, Davis gave preference to men he liked personally, and spurned those he thought were his enemies. Excellent generals like Beauregard and J. Johnston were kept in backwaters, while incompetents like Bragg and Hood were pushed forwards. Lincoln's military performance improved over the years, while Davis showed no signs of learning or improvement. He never had any strategy other than defend his borders. Lincoln very early adopted Scott's Anaconda plan, and stuck to it. Despite battlefield reverses, the overall strategy was entirely successful. While the South had many gifted generals, they were all flawed, and were not used as best they could be. Lee's aggression cost the south several key defeats, while the victories he won were ephemeral. Jackson was inconsistent. Hill too sickly. The Army of Northern Virginia monopolized the best units and commanders, to the cost of the other theaters. The war was lost for the CSA in the West, not the east.