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

[Jimmy Higgins]

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?

That is an interesting question. I would suppose it would have had to of gone to the Supreme Court. In the end, it would have come down to interstate commerce issues.

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.

Except for the whole Emancipation Proclamation which was designed to prevent Britain and France supporting the south. Lincoln made it clear that support of the South was support of slavery.

 

[Hickdive]

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

...
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....

Here you repeat the mistake that the Confederacy made in assuming that British antipathy towards the USA outweighs British moral repugnance at slavery (never mind the hypocrisy of that position). Whilst researching shipwrecks of the early 1860s I had occasion to read a lot of original British newspapers of the time. One thing that is clear from the editorials and published letters is that Britain would never enter a war that by winning would preserve slavery.

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.

Actually, no. Relations between Britain and France weren't particularly hostile at the time, remember they had been allies against Russia in the Crimea just a few years before.

The USA's attempts at "liberating" Canada had been soundly defeated in 1812 and both the British and French had no particular desire to become embroiled in another war after the debacle in Crimea. Besides which, British hegemony in India was nearing its zenith and there was far too much money to be made in Indian cotton as a replacement for supplies from the southern states of the US.

 

[pegasus8]

The North beat the South with one hand tide behind its back. It was not even close.

There were a few occasion especially the Laird Rams incident when England came the closest to recognizing the CSA during the war. And English recognition would have immediately brought the CSA its independence. Britain was actually sending over troops to Canada during the Civil War. The British were not big fans of America economic might in the 19th century.

The greatest event in the 19th century on the planet was not about slavery and or freeing of the slaves. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation only declared the slaves in the states that had rebelled, and not the four border states still in the union, free. Lincoln the ever sure shrewdest of the shrewd was a clever politician and arguably one of the world's great statesmen. There was a large faction in the North that did not give a rat's ass for the slaves and the ideological endeavor the North pursued over the South. There were draft riots and lynchings of blacks throughout the war. Hence we see the rise of the Copper Heads.

Yet the South only had a few industrial factories that could produce weapons, munitions, iron plate, rolling stock, etc for the war effort. Richmond Virginia had the biggest concentration of factories and was only 100 miles from Washington D.C. While the armies in Virginia fought and maneuvered in ruthless bloody fashion generals like Grant and Sherman marched their legions and occupied the rest of the South. Everyone points to Gettysburg in 63 as the turning point but it was Grant in 63 capturing Vicksburg and splitting the Confederacy in half that was the change of momentum. The closing of the Mississippi in 63 and the burning of Atlanta 64[?] were the death knell of the CSA. All the fighting between Washington and Richmond till the siege of Petersburg was a giant chess game that the South could never win. Toss in the largest blockade in the history of the planet up to that time and the clearing of the world's oceans of the CSN's raiders and one can get a since of the enormity of the first "modern war!"

The CSA could never win the war tactically as we have seen their many victories over the Union forces. The South gambled that England and the rest of Europe would intervene over cotton. She thought in 1861 that cotton would be "king," by starving out the textile factories for lack of cotton. But the ever so smart British were able to import cotton from Egypt/India during the war as they sold weapons, munitions, ships, etc to the lost cause of the South. With the number of ports able to import those precious cargos of war items ever so shrinking from the blockade and land armies it was only a matter of time till the Union juggernaut strangled the South into starvation and defeat.

The fact that only a small % of land owners, less than 1%, owned slaves in the South points to the Civil War being something other than slavery. Most of the people of the South were piss ass poor farmers and tradesman. The workers in the North did not take too kindly in seeing free blacks work for less and lower wages in the industrial areas of the North.

There was no way in hell that the federal government was going to let those southern states get away with succeeding. Britain and France were careful as not to incite the U.S. in war over Mexico and Canada. If one visits the forts built in the 1820's to the 1850's to protect America's important harbors and ports you can get an appreciation of their purpose. These forts were built to protect America's interest against the aggression of a European power. It just so happens that they were used during the Civil War.

The only way the CSA could have won the Civil War would have been through a political solution and or foreign recognition. Yes the North might have grown war weary over the deaths and horrific details of this first modern war. Yet the North had so much more and did not even deploy all of its manpower and economic might. The historical repercussions of an independent CSA would have huge and great implications on history and the world.

Peace and thanks again Ipetrich another good one dude.

Pegasus

 

[Horatio Parker]

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?

A good question. Funny how the perception is of the North as aggressor.

The power had shifted to the North, but the South refused to see it. Believing your own bullshit (chivalry, the supposed superiority of the Southern way of life etc) is a dangerous habit.

 

[lpetrich]

A common apologetic for the Confederacy is that the large majority of soldiers on the Confederate side had not owned slaves, and that they had only fought to protect their homeland from invasion by a hostile army.

However, many Confederate soldiers had been sons of slaveowners, employees of slaveowners, etc. Such association with slaveowners was more common among soldiers than among the general population of the Confederate states. More broadly, many non-slaveowners perceived that they had a stake in the continuation of slavery, and they defended it as if they themselves had owned slaves.

“Ninety-eight percent of Texas Confederate soldiers never owned a slave.” | Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog
Non-Slaveholders’ Stake in Defending the “Peculiar Institution” | Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog

Selected Statistics

What	States	Seceded?	# Slaves	Slave. Frac.	Owning Frac.
Lower South	SC, GA, AL, MS, LA, TX, FL	Before Ft. Sumter attack	2,312,352	47%	36.7%
Upper South	VA, NC, TN, AR	After Ft. Sumter attack	1,208,758	29%	25.3%
Border States	DE, MD, KY, MO	Neutral or in the Union	432,586	13%	15.9%

The slave fraction is for the total population.
The owning fraction is for white families.

Notice the correlation between amount of slavery and support for the Confederacy. This extended to which people tried to secede from slave states -- those who owned hardly any slaves. Western Virginians succeeded but eastern Tennesseeans failed.

The Confederacy's politicians had made a big issue out of protection of slavery. They had earlier tried to have at least some new states be slave states, they wrote slavery protection into their Constitution, and they objected to northern states' interfering with the catching of runaway slaves.

Avalon Project - Confederate States of America : Documents, especially Avalon Project - Confederate States of America - Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union


So this Confederate apologists' myth is a monumental case of lying to oneself.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

and they objected to northern states' interfering with the catching of runaway slaves.

This has always struck me as the funniest part of the South's hypocrisy and attempts to rewrite the history of what they were doing. They keep going on about how it was about States Rights and not slavery (while being necessarily vague about what second States Right were interested in). Then when the Northern states exerted their own States Rights to ignore the provisions of the federal Fugitive Slave Law and help the slaves remain free, the South is all over them for not respecting the dictates of the federal government.

At least the Germans own up to their history and admit how evil they were and how badly they fucked up without trying to rewrite the histories and try to sweep what they were doing under the rug.

 

[lpetrich]

As to what might have happened if the Confederates had been careful to avoid making provocations like attacking Fort Sumter, I don't know how far they might have gone without starting a shooting war. Eventually the issue of Confederate-state Federal property like military bases would have come up. Property like Fort Sumter.

There's also the issue of why Confederate politicians did not propose their secession in Congress. Or did they briefly do so? Secession is one of the loose ends of the US Constitution, and it would have been interesting to see how that might have played out. Would they have tried to get a Constitutional amendment authorizing their secession? A Constitutional Convention?

 

[steve_bnk]

The topic was a hot one at the founding. They kicked the can down the road because it was too controversial to resolve and have a consensus on ratification of the constitution.

It was in the newspapers and being discussed well before the actual war. One cartoon I saw caricatured Lincoln as having black features.

 

[Sarpedon]

Just one? Slavers commonly hinted that Abolitionists were mulattos.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Just one? Slavers commonly hinted that Abolitionists were mulattos.

Well, that was uncalled for by them. I'm now taking a position that I don't like slavers.

 

[steve_bnk]

Up through probably the 50s racism was explicitly voiced in print and in open statements. Sports team owners quite openly stated no blacks (substitute racial slur) would ever play for them.

Sterling would have been the norm.

 

[boneyard bill]

A common apologetic for the Confederacy is that the large majority of soldiers on the Confederate side had not owned slaves, and that they had only fought to protect their homeland from invasion by a hostile army.

However, many Confederate soldiers had been sons of slaveowners, employees of slaveowners, etc. Such association with slaveowners was more common among soldiers than among the general population of the Confederate states. More broadly, many non-slaveowners perceived that they had a stake in the continuation of slavery, and they defended it as if they themselves had owned slaves.

“Ninety-eight percent of Texas Confederate soldiers never owned a slave.” | Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog
Non-Slaveholders’ Stake in Defending the “Peculiar Institution” | Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog

Selected Statistics

What	States	Seceded?	# Slaves	Slave. Frac.	Owning Frac.
Lower South	SC, GA, AL, MS, LA, TX, FL	Before Ft. Sumter attack	2,312,352	47%	36.7%
Upper South	VA, NC, TN, AR	After Ft. Sumter attack	1,208,758	29%	25.3%
Border States	DE, MD, KY, MO	Neutral or in the Union	432,586	13%	15.9%

The slave fraction is for the total population.
The owning fraction is for white families.

Notice the correlation between amount of slavery and support for the Confederacy. This extended to which people tried to secede from slave states -- those who owned hardly any slaves. Western Virginians succeeded but eastern Tennesseeans failed.

The Confederacy's politicians had made a big issue out of protection of slavery. They had earlier tried to have at least some new states be slave states, they wrote slavery protection into their Constitution, and they objected to northern states' interfering with the catching of runaway slaves.

Avalon Project - Confederate States of America : Documents, especially Avalon Project - Confederate States of America - Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union


So this Confederate apologists' myth is a monumental case of lying to oneself.

I read somewhere that 100,000 Southern whites fought on the Northern side. If you add those to approximately 300,000 freed black slaves who fought for the North, it appears that there were almost as many Southerners who fought for the North as fought for the South.

 

[boneyard bill]

Up through probably the 50s racism was explicitly voiced in print and in open statements. Sports team owners quite openly stated no blacks (substitute racial slur) would ever play for them.

Sterling would have been the norm.

Owners didn't just vow it, they enforced it. The first black major league baseball player was Jackie Robinson who was admitted to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Bill Veeck, then the owner of the Cleveland Indians expressed the view the Robinson wouldn't make it. For that he was accused of being racist. He denied the charge and offered to bring a black baseball player into the American League. He then recruited Larry Doby who became the first black baseball player in the American League in 1948. When it came to Robinson, Veeck proved to be a pretty poor scout, but Veeck redeemed himself with Doby who proved to be an excellent center fielder who helped Cleveland win the World Series and 1948 and the American League pennant in 1954. Who also won two home run and rbi championships. But for the biases of the New York media, who dominated MVP voting, Doby probably would have been the MVP in 1954.

But it was the signing of Robinson and Doby, more than their championships, that put O'Malley and Veeck in the history books.

 

[SLD]

The South lost for quite a few reasons, and the North did fight it with one hand behind their back. But that hasn't stopped weaker powers before - witness the American Revolution for one. The South could have won it, and almost came close a few times. They could have taken Washington after the first bull run, and maybe even after the second. Jeb Stuart came close to sacking the White House during Gettysburg. Lee could have avoided giving battle at Gettysburg and listened to Longstreet. By holding Atlanta and the Valley, they could have ensured McLellan's election. A sniper at Ft Stephens could have killed lincoln.

But then what? Exactly how would they have made peace? Clearly the North was hell bent on not returning runaway slaves. The south was too much a victim of its own institutions, slavery and so called state's rights. It could never have negotiated a decent peace with the north. Slavery would have continued to drag it down, but it would also be seriously disrupted by the north. The only way the south could have triumphed was if it conquered every northern state and turned the whole country into slaveholding. Something it didn't have the power or wherewithal to do.

Slavery has been an unmitigated disaster for the south. It allowed for the rise of an aristocracy, and we sitll suffer because of it. It destroyed the South in a horrible war, and forever scarred it. It became a comtradiction in terms, virtually Orwellian, freedom is slavery.

SLD

 

[lpetrich]

Even if the North decided to quit fighting, I doubt that it would have wanted to return escaped slaves. But the peace afterward could have been something of a cold war, and the North might have been willing to appease the South on this issue by trying to keep slaves from escaping into it.

There's also the question of the capitals of the two sides being *very* close together. Would the North have decided to move its capital to some safer spot? Would the South?

For the North, I think that a new capital would be somewhere on the east coast, because that's where much of the population would have been. But the northern Midwest was growing, especially near Chicago, so the North might have decided on a capital somewhere in between. Albany, NY? Cleveland, OH?


I agree that mechanization of agriculture would eventually have ended slavery, by reducing the amount of farm labor necessary. But that would only have happened in the early 20th century, as internal-combustion engines became more readily usable. But I think that black people would still have been subjected to second-class citizenship in the South, something like Jim Crow or apartheid in South Africa.

 

[bilby]

Even if the North decided to quit fighting, I doubt that it would have wanted to return escaped slaves. But the peace afterward could have been something of a cold war, and the North might have been willing to appease the South on this issue by trying to keep slaves from escaping into it.

There's also the question of the capitals of the two sides being *very* close together. Would the North have decided to move its capital to some safer spot? Would the South?

For the North, I think that a new capital would be somewhere on the east coast, because that's where much of the population would have been. But the northern Midwest was growing, especially near Chicago, so the North might have decided on a capital somewhere in between. Albany, NY? Cleveland, OH?


I agree that mechanization of agriculture would eventually have ended slavery, by reducing the amount of farm labor necessary. But that would only have happened in the early 20th century, as internal-combustion engines became more readily usable. But I think that black people would still have been subjected to second-class citizenship in the South, something like Jim Crow or apartheid in South Africa.

Seoul is within easy artillery range of North Korea - so much so, that NK hasn't bothered to establish a strategic bombing capability despite massive military expenditure.

It is a rare thing for any nation to move their capital city; rarer still when such a move might suggest to an enemy that they are intimidated by their proximity.

 

[Bullmoose Too]

Even if the North decided to quit fighting, I doubt that it would have wanted to return escaped slaves. But the peace afterward could have been something of a cold war, and the North might have been willing to appease the South on this issue by trying to keep slaves from escaping into it.

There's also the question of the capitals of the two sides being *very* close together. Would the North have decided to move its capital to some safer spot? Would the South?

For the North, I think that a new capital would be somewhere on the east coast, because that's where much of the population would have been. But the northern Midwest was growing, especially near Chicago, so the North might have decided on a capital somewhere in between. Albany, NY? Cleveland, OH?


I agree that mechanization of agriculture would eventually have ended slavery, by reducing the amount of farm labor necessary. But that would only have happened in the early 20th century, as internal-combustion engines became more readily usable. But I think that black people would still have been subjected to second-class citizenship in the South, something like Jim Crow or apartheid in South Africa.

Slaves are more then capable of using farming machines. Mechanization would have lowered the amout of labor needed to operate a farm. That could simply mean less slaves.

 

[Bronzeage]

Slaves are more then capable of using farming machines. Mechanization would have lowered the amout of labor needed to operate a farm. That could simply mean less slaves.

I am always mildly surprised when someone makes a premise based on a radical change in human nature.

I will grant that a slave is as capable of running an machine as any other person, but why would he want to? What is his/her incentive to increase productivity. Less whippings? He already has food and clothing. Do we offer shoes, as well? Maybe just more food.

Anyone who has ever supervised a work crew where pay was the same if the machine worked or broke down, can see the problem here. A smaller work force with greater skills and no incentive to produce more is a recipe for bankruptcy.

 

[Duke Leto]

Funny thing about slave operated complex machinery. It has this odd habit of breaking.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I agree that mechanization of agriculture would eventually have ended slavery, by reducing the amount of farm labor necessary.

I disagree. If I recall correctly, slavery was becoming less important back in the very late 1700s until some guy named Whitney invented a particular machine called the cotton gin.