Confederate victory at Gettysburg

stevep

Well-known member
I wonder how long could Spain hold onto Cuba in this scenario.

Unless the south makes a deal to buy it from Spain probably quite a while. Their a lot weaker than the US as a whole and especially in naval matters. If someone with a stronger navy was to intervene and there are likely to be at least 3 possible candidates here then any expedition force is screwed.
 

History Learner

Well-known member
I wonder how long could Spain hold onto Cuba in this scenario.

Depends on whether or not Spain moves to end slavery in the late 1860s there as they did historically; such was a result of the Union victory, which allowed for greater international pressure to be brought down upon Spain, Brazil, etc. Richmond could find it more in their interesting to have Spain retain it and thus remain in the Pro-Slavery bloc in general rather than attempt to buy it, as Spain did suggest in secret to the United States around 1870 historically.
 

Buba

A total creep
1 - certain politicians in the South could get misty eyed and ramble about expansion into the Carribean to their heart's content when they were part of the USA. Whose policy up to 1861 was more often then not run by Southrons in the South's interest.
An independent CSA, weaker than the USA, with independence related issues, with an unfriendly agressive and expansionist power to its North, is as good as guarantied not be that pushy. Also, in the Carribean it would only be able to expand as much as the world's then superpower, Britain, allowed. France tapping its foot menacingly would rein it in nicely as well.
2 - Brazil commercially tied to the Union? Please tell me more, I'm ignorant. I thunk that up to WWII the UK more or less owned South America.
3 -
the CSA will at the very least be seen as a rival by the Empire of Brazil, and more likely as a (likely)future enemy.
A map is your friend. The Carribean is half a world away from Brazil and not on its radar. Brazil's radar ends on (south) Venezuela. AFAIK the CSA's did not even reach that far.
4 - I agree - no reason for CSA and Brazil to being particularly chummy. But IMO not due to some rivalry - as they are too far away and too weak as to impact one another - but due to distance and no common interests. Unless indeed they get shunned for slavery at some point.
5 - With minimal POD's in OTL Spain could be holding Cuba to this day. Same ITTL.
6 - I wonder when the 13th Amendment gets passed.
I'd also recommend Colossal Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Post–Civil War World by Adrian Brettle on the topic of Confederate state building as well as foreign policy goals in the long term. To cite from it some:
brettle-part-i-png.369009

brettle-part-ii-png.369010

brettle-part-iii-png.369011
No can see quote ... ?
 
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History Learner

Well-known member
You wrote
To cite from it some:
I don't see anything past the ":"
I know that there is something there as I can mark it - but even copying and pasting it somewhere else does not reveal what is there :)

Hmm, that is odd. I logged out of my account and I can see still it, which is a series of screenshots from the book. Anyone else having this issue?
 

gral

Well-known member
1 - certain politicians in the South could get misty eyed and ramble about expansion into the Carribean to their heart's content when they were part of the USA. Whose policy up to 1861 was more often then not run by Southrons in the South's interest.
An independent CSA, weaker than the USA, with independence related issues, with an unfriendly agressive and expansionist power to its North, is as good as guarantied not be that pushy. Also, in the Carribean it would only be able to expand as much as the world's then superpower, Britain, allowed. France tapping its foot menacingly would rein it in nicely as well.
2 - Brazil commercially tied to the Union? Please tell me more, I'm ignorant. I thunk that up to WWII the UK more or less owned South America.

1- I am aware the Confederacy wouldn't be able to expand beyond the Caribbean(if that). It doesn't change the fact that Southerners, in the 1840s and 1850s, were pushing for slaves to move to the Amazon to colonize the land there. Considering:

A) The slaves would come with their masters;
B) The fact that Brazil in the 1830s and 1840s was weak enough to be really concerned about other countries taking territory;
C) Texas as an example of what happens to countries who allow farmers from other country into a sparsely populated, and with scarce government presence, territory

, you can understand why Brazil was wary of Southerners. Also, that perception would endure for some time; Brazil only opened the Amazon River to foreign navigation in 1866, due to the Triple Alliance War, but I strongly suspect the fact the CSA didn't exist anymore featured on the calculus.

2- Coffee was the main Brazilian export since 1837, accounting for more than half(in some periods, as much as 75%) of Brazilian export revenues(which were the main governmental revenues back then). I don't know when exactly the USA became the main Brazilian client, but it was around 1850. The UK was the main exporter to Brazil, and had a lot of clout, but Brazilian commercial interests were directly tied to the US.
 

Navarro

Well-known member
At the time of Gettysburg, the Roebuck Motion to recognize the Confederacy was before the British Parliament and Napoleon was mulling over a unilateral intervention on the part of the French. Either would be decisive, although if the British do go forward with it the French would unquestionably follow their lead

Recognition by GB does nothing to materially help the Confederate cause; all it means is that they get formal belligerent status, so practically it means ... their soldiers get the right to be treated as legit. prisoners of war. Which they already had, so no net gain. France and Britain also depended much more on trade with the Union than "King Cotton" (and by this, I include 40% of the UK's grain supply), which is the reason no serious moves toward an intervention happened IRL. And a Confed. victory at Gettysburg changes none of those factors. The best shot for a British intervention is the Trent affair, which is already over and done with by the POD.

Unless the south makes a deal to buy it from Spain probably quite a while. Their a lot weaker than the US as a whole and especially in naval matters. If someone with a stronger navy was to intervene and there are likely to be at least 3 possible candidates here then any expedition force is screwed.

The military of an independent Confederacy would probably be unable to make any expeditionary moves, as it would be forced to be on permanent guard both against its northern flank and the threat of a slave rebellion.

The whole State's Rights issue is a Lost Causer invention rather than any real basis in the contemporary struggle itself. To quote from
Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the Confederate Nation by John Majewski, Chapter ECONOMIC NATIONALISM AND THE GROWTH OF THE CONFEDERATE STATE

So we have what seems to be a largely command-economy model, military-focussed, in a slave society. Yes, US prosperity may be damaged but I can't see the Confederates becoming a world economic power.

Generally a slave economy would have to be based on resource extraction and agrarianism, as pre-modern ones were - attempts in the 20th century to run a slave-based industrial economy in Germany and Russia ended disastrously and the Chinese system looks to be unstable. At best, a surviving Confederacy, if it lasts into the early 1900s, becomes a banana-republic petrostate with a hypertrophied but shoddily-equipped military.

Not necessarily. Exhausting the will to fight of a larger neighbour doesn't mean the country won't end up drained by the battle. Also having 'won' the war for independence there is a sizeable chance that the next stage is internal conflict - talking politically, economically and socially here rather than militarily as to which group(s) get the spoils.

Not to mention that some problems aren't solvable by sheer camaraderie.

Plus projecting power at some distance into a foreign territory that has no welcome for another set of invaders seeking to remove them from any real power and treat them as at best 3rd class citizens is a lot harder than fighting very near your centre of gravity. Ordinary whites will fight to defend their state against invasion and pay taxes for it, albeit probably with a lot of grumbling. Getting them to do so for a foreign adventure so that a small number of wealthy people can make more money is another matter. The sort of propaganda in the press reports in post #15 won't take you very far.

Not to mention that the Union will be looking for a rematch as France post-1871 was for Alsace-Lorraine, x100. With the Confederacy's vastly lower population, and its need to guard against the ever-present internal threat of unruly slaves ... can its army even afford any foreign expeditions?
 
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Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
I wonder how long could Spain hold onto Cuba in this scenario.

I think Cuba would be fine. The Confederate leadership had a lot of desires to expand once they won the American Civil War and secured their Independence, but they'd likely be more focused on spreading their taint to Northern Mexico (especially with the French military adventurism going on down there). Of course this would come only after they secure the peace. The United States will be withdrawing, but since the War in this timeline didn't end until Lincoln's election apparently that meant that General Grant and the Union military still had fifteen or so months to play around in other theaters before apparently European recognition of the Confederacy and Lincoln being voted out of office ended the conflict.

So the Confederacy is going to have to deal with large swaths of their slave population, especially in the Western States, having been apparently sprung free as well as large swaths of those areas having been devastated by Union Occupation, constant fighting, raiding including by Confederates and so forth. And even those 'contraband' that were freed by Union wartime measures were probably a small number of the millions still in bondage.

The Confederacy is going to be riddled with war debt, roughly a hundred thousand war dead, an authoritarian government with its own queer security apparatus that they've already used to monitor and police things like deserters as much as runaways and still having to monitor the third to 40% of the Confederate population that is in fact still enslaved. The Confederate Civil War would likely empower the Southern Aristocracy though since Landowners and the like were given plenty of exemptions during the War whose lower classes both volunteered and later conscripted into the fight while many of the wealthy landowners could exercise the option of renaming at home so as to keep their Blacks in check. Plus... while it's not as bad as it would be in OTL, by 1865 half of Southern livestock was killed or lost, and two fifths of its farms and machinery destroyed or lost, as well as hundreds of miles of railroads. And numerous cities burdened by occupation or just straight up burned down like Jackson, Mississippi during the course of the conflict.

But yeah, I see this as even if there was a Confederate peace, the United States would be a hostile power to them in everything short of war. There might be later conflicts and tensions, especially in the Western states and with the Confederacy potentially making moves into Northern Mexico, there's no reason the United States wouldn't want to make life difficult for any Southwestern misadventures painful for the Confederates. And most of the Mexican population would probably be supportive of such interference. Many of them didn't want French intervention and suffer their Imperial ambitions, replacing that with a Texan one would be even more anathema.

I don't actually see French and especially British intervention towards the end of the war or later on as particularly likely. While the Confederacy would be preferable for Cotton exports, it's not like there are alternatives in case the Slavocracy gets too burdensome with its boorish politics and foreign policy. Plus as stated earlier, the United States itself is a far larger target of British finance and investment and it would be for decades. In 1880 the per capita wealth of the Southern States was $363 dollars compared to $1350 in the Northeastern United States. Britain risked enough by recognizing the United States, it's not going to sacrifice anything more to alienate such a lucrative cash cow. They wanted American markets and an increasing amount of their population isn't going to sympathize with the British Aristocracy and their support of a Slavocracy just for Cotton exports. Britain isn't going to want to risk a war with the United States on behalf of Confederate Cotton and Slaves. They're going to want to go back to business as normal, not sacrifice abroad business opportunities and making America a long term rival who'll keep a large military just so it can hover it over Canada and be a potential ally to Prussia or Russia or some other European power in the decades to come. Britain wants the United States in a box, friendly to Britain, and neutral at worst.

And France will be having its own issues as well, unless something dramatically different happens along its Eastern borders in the next decade or so. The more time that passes, the less sympathetic an expansionist backwater like the Confederacy will appeal to potential European allies, until the next Great War in Europe perhaps, but I don't wanna go full Turtledove. I'm far from that smart. The Confederacy is going to be an Aristocratic Landowning run quasi-"Democracy" with over a third of its population enslaved, another ten percent of its male population disenfranchised and at least two thirds of them at least economically marginalized. Plus they'll have to devote a larger portion of their economy and population to a military, not just to support their foreign misadventures, but to keep their slaves in line who may or may not become more belligerent since the Confederacy is still bordered on almost all of its land borders by a belligerent United States just waiting for the right time to redress past wrongs.
 

Navarro

Well-known member
Not to mention the boll weevil which is coming up in a couple decades and might arrive sooner with a Confederate occupation of northern Mexico.
 
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PsihoKekec

Swashbuckling Accountant
Another problem is that free of the shackles of USA, Confederacy will go on acquiring more slaves, which really won't go well with UK, who went to great lengths to stamp out the slavery.
 

Buba

A total creep
Another problem is that free of the shackles of USA, Confederacy will go on acquiring more slaves,
No.
1 - Supply.
The import of slaves had banned since 1808 (there was a smuggled trickle up to 1860, but AFAIK it was marginal). The US slave population was growing through natural increase. The USA was not the Carribean/Brasil.
2 - Demand.
The CSA will not experience any surge in demand as - something which was not widely known/understood/interiorised at that time - it had run out of land easily converted to cash crops. Cuba - Spain imported fresh slaves from Africa (which the British did not seem to care much about) but if necessary the CSA had enough if its own to supply local plantations with labour.
3 - Shakles
What shackles? Up to 1860 the South as good as run the USA. The ACW happened when it did because the South was loosing its control of Congress.
which really won't go well with UK, who went to great lengths to stamp out the slavery.
The UK did nothing to stomp out slavery. It stomped out (most of) the trans Atlantic slave trade. The UK did not give a fuck about slavery as such - considering its navy and economic clout, it could had demanded that e.g. Peru or Brazil or Spain or Netherlands end slavery. Something that Britain never did.

As to "British public opinion" - I have a nagging suspicion that 99% of posters are ignorant/forget that the UK did not have universal franchise which could be whipped up by the media into a frenzy over whatever issues the editors/owners fancied. One - the electorate of the Commons was c.10% (?) of the population - well off and educated and less prone to manipulation and hysterics; two - the non-elected Lords had a lot to say in this period, hence again "public opinion" means a very different animal to what we understand today.
 

stevep

Well-known member
Recognition by GB does nothing to materially help the Confederate cause; all it means is that they get formal belligerent status, so practically it means ... their soldiers get the right to be treated as legit. prisoners of war. Which they already had, so no net gain. France and Britain also depended much more on trade with the Union than "King Cotton" (and by this, I include 40% of the UK's grain supply), which is the reason no serious moves toward an intervention happened IRL. And a Confed. victory at Gettysburg changes none of those factors. The best shot for a British intervention is the Trent affair, which is already over and done with by the POD.

Navarro

Agree with most of what you say but I think the point with formal recognition by any other powers is that I believe Lincoln had threatened to treat that as a casus belli so unless he backed down on this that would greatly widen the conflict. Not to mention, especially if it was with Britain its an end to the northern blockade and their pretty certain to see their own coastline blockaded. In 63 the north has greatly reduced its dependency on imports from Europe and elsewhere, with most of the rifle imports having been delivered and its own production ramped up but there would still be issues.

Grain exports would be disrupted, simply because union flagged ships would be vulnerable to seizure by the combatant and the combatant wouldn't be sending its own ships into union ports so a third party would be needed. If the combatant was Britain then that rules out the two largest merchant fleets on the N Atlantic run. However would Lincoln ban all grain exports to Europe? That would be a hell of a hit to the union economy, especially for the farmers involved, albeit that with so many men under arms and also a market for fodder for all the horses also in the army the home market. Remembering that once ships sail from union ports the union has relatively little control on where it ends up. Merchants could sail to other ports or sell to grain merchants in Europe who then sell to the highest bidder.

Steve
 

Navarro

Well-known member
Navarro

Agree with most of what you say but I think the point with formal recognition by any other powers is that I believe Lincoln had threatened to treat that as a casus belli so unless he backed down on this that would greatly widen the conflict. Not to mention, especially if it was with Britain its an end to the northern blockade and their pretty certain to see their own coastline blockaded. In 63 the north has greatly reduced its dependency on imports from Europe and elsewhere, with most of the rifle imports having been delivered and its own production ramped up but there would still be issues.

One also has to note that at the time GB was also concerned with a crisis involving Russian expansionism in the Balkans; France was also worried about Prussia and reluctant to do anything without British support. Again, the Confederates winning at Gettysburg doesn't change the blunt fact that trade relations with the North are more important to GB than the supply of cotton from the South. So, again, I don't see them recognising the Confederacy until after the war is over.

The Confederacy is going to be an Aristocratic Landowning run quasi-"Democracy" with over a third of its population enslaved, another ten percent of its male population disenfranchised and at least two thirds of them at least economically marginalized. Plus they'll have to devote a larger portion of their economy and population to a military, not just to support their foreign misadventures, but to keep their slaves in line who may or may not become more belligerent since the Confederacy is still bordered on almost all of its land borders by a belligerent United States just waiting for the right time to redress past wrongs.

Sounds less like "camaraderie and social solidarity" and more like an environment ripe for a communist revolution. Which probably results in a Confederate Civil War that culminates with the vastly more populous Union invading and annihilating both divided factions.
 
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Navarro

Well-known member
Sounds less like "camaraderie and social solidarity" and more like an environment ripe for a communist revolution. Which probably results in a Confederate Civil War that culminates with the vastly more populous Union invading and annihilating both divided factions.

Given the agrarian nature of the Confed. and the significant handicaps it has for industrialisation ... maybe we'll even see an earlier analogue to Maoism rise up. That would be dreadful indeed.
 

Navarro

Well-known member
None of those are debilitating issues. If the Confederacy is able to win a war against a Union that both outnumbers and outproduces them, then they self evidentially have enough social solidarity, gehmeinschaft, togetherness-feeling to make collective sacrifices to solve the problems of victory.

In this scenario, the Confederacy wins because they get lucky and miraculously roll all sixes in the Battle of Gettysburg.

Now, in an age where capability to absorb attrition and industrial capacity is becoming increasingly essential to win wars, they:

- Have a large area of their country ravaged by war.
- Have an industrial workforce/manpower limit of a literal quarter of the Union's.
- Have 33% to 40% of the population posing a constant internal threat of rebellion which cannot be removed without destroying their ideological "cornerstone".
- Large amounts of the rest of the population are economically marginalised and disenfranchised, with essentially no middle class,.
- Are reliant on a single cash crop for the vast majority of their economy, which is headed for a disastrous blight, and have no room to expand production.
- Have major hard limits on industrialisation because air conditioning won't be invented until the 1950s.
- Have a notoriously inefficient command-economy setup.

In a generation or two, the most likely scenario is the bluecoats coming back and crushing the CSA, and all "togetherness-feeling" will do is ensure a lot more of their soldiers get machine-gunned or artillery-shelled before they capitulate.

A confederate victory likely means Maximilian's Mexican Empire survives for starters.

It was already falling apart and only propped up with constant French support before the ACW ended. And it's not as if an America defeated in the ACW or a surviving CSA wouldn't have volunteers go over to join the rebels, and last of all Maximillian's empire was far from a reactionary project:

A provisional constitution was issued in 1865 ...

The emperor passed legislation guaranteeing equality before the law and freedom of speech, and laws meant to defend the rights of laborers, especially that of the Indians. Labor laws in Yucatán actually became harsher on workers after the fall of the Empire.[24] A national system of free schools was also planned based on the German gymnasia and the emperor founded an academy of sciences and literature ...

Maximilian I wanted to reorganize the territory following scientific criteria, instead of following historical ties, traditional allegiances and the interests of local groups ....

intended to aid the development of the country by opening up the nation to immigration ...

Colonists were to be granted citizenship at once, and gained exemption from taxes for the first year, and an exemption from military services for five years ...

so IDK why you seem to view it surviving as a positive.

And if either Britain or France, or both support a Mormon insurgency in Deseret

Yes, they'll be able to transport guns and troops to the literal middle of the continent with ease. And Deseret was never intended by the Mormons to be an independent country, so there's no motive for them to start an insurgency that can be supported.

manifest destiny and the continental block ambitions of the upstart colonial republic could be contained,

If they're also able to magically sink California, yes.

Public opinion in both France and Britain, for different reasons, was that both had missed an opportunity to roll back World Revolution and Liberalism

They were far more concerned with the supply of cotton and trade goods from America than the grand ideological motives you seem to be projecting onto them. Plus the dominant ideology at the time in GB was classical liberalism, so you're at least half-wrong there.
 
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History Learner

Well-known member
Recognition by GB does nothing to materially help the Confederate cause; all it means is that they get formal belligerent status, so practically it means ... their soldiers get the right to be treated as legit. prisoners of war. Which they already had, so no net gain. France and Britain also depended much more on trade with the Union than "King Cotton" (and by this, I include 40% of the UK's grain supply), which is the reason no serious moves toward an intervention happened IRL. And a Confed. victory at Gettysburg changes none of those factors. The best shot for a British intervention is the Trent affair, which is already over and done with by the POD.

First, it needs to be noted recognition extends much more than just the condition of PoWs on its own; for one, it allows the Confederate Government to seek out and obtain international financial assistance in a way it never achieved historically. Beyond that, though, it was always understood on the part of the British, French, Americans and Confederates that recognition was not a one off and done thing, but rather the starting move in forcing a diplomatic end to the conflict under the auspices of the Europeans. Specifically, during the Intervention Crisis of 1862 the British made to ready the Royal Navy for the Spring of 1863 should the United States respond negatively. Ideally though, it was conceded that such would not be needed; diplomatic and economic pressure alone would collapse the Union war effort should the Europeans force the issue.

As for King Corn, Sarthaka has already pointed out the folly of that.

So we have what seems to be a largely command-economy model, military-focused, in a slave society. Yes, US prosperity may be damaged but I can't see the Confederates becoming a world economic power.

Generally a slave economy would have to be based on resource extraction and agrarianism, as pre-modern ones were - attempts in the 20th century to run a slave-based industrial economy in Germany and Russia ended disastrously and the Chinese system looks to be unstable. At best, a surviving Confederacy, if it lasts into the early 1900s, becomes a banana-republic petrostate with a hypertrophied but shoddily-equipped military.

On the size of the Confederate economy, the 1914 US Census of Manufacturing shows that 9.5% of US manufacturing was in the former Confederate States, including Oklahoma. This was a return to form, as in 1860 the South contained 14% of industry and by 1914 was at 15%. If we go with Paul Kennedy's numbers for 1913 from The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, that places the South IOTL 1914 at about half of France's industrial output. Without the devastation of 1864-1865, tariffs to protect the Confederate industry from its Union counterparts, and the Planters not wiped out, I think it's fair to say the Confederacy could at least have that growth but won't have the war decline.

So, ATL, 19% of the OTL U.S. total. Kennedy says the U.S. output in 1913 was 32% of Global Output. If the Confederacy is 19% of that, it's 6% of Global output, which would put it equal to France in WWI. If the C.S.A achieves a rate double it's OTL growth, which I think is obtainable, that would place it at 9% of Global Manufacturing Output; for reference, Britain is at 13.6%.

global-output-png.358662


As for the matter of industry and slavery, Robert Fogel's Without Consent or Contract and The Economics of Industrial Slavery and the Old South by Robert Starobin are good reads. In reality, the planters had no opposition to industrialization and the overall trends favored it; it was cost competitive with free labor and the rate of return was, in some cases, equal to cotton; overall it was not far behind. Indeed, hundreds of thousands of slaves even in 1860 were involved in Industrial or Proto-Industrial work and the overall proportion could and did show fluctuations. Case in point is the effort made to develop Birmingham as an industrial center in the 1850s by Planters.
 

Circle of Willis

Well-known member
Sounds less like "camaraderie and social solidarity" and more like an environment ripe for a communist revolution. Which probably results in a Confederate Civil War that culminates with the vastly more populous Union invading and annihilating both divided factions.
Well now I'm curious as to what the mutation of Marxism in a 'Red Confederacy' might look like. 'Actually it's racially egalitarian like other Communists around the world would claim to be' seems both unimaginative and unlikely, considering that the generation of poorer white populists who took power after Reconstruction (such as Mississippi's Theodore Bilbo) were AFAIK even more openly and murderously racist than the planters before them. Collective ownership of slaves by the white population as an ideological cornerstone, perhaps?
 

Navarro

Well-known member
Well now I'm curious as to what the mutation of Marxism in a 'Red Confederacy' might look like. 'Actually it's racially egalitarian like other Communists around the world would claim to be' seems both unimaginative and unlikely, considering that the generation of poorer white populists who took power after Reconstruction (such as Mississippi's Theodore Bilbo) were AFAIK even more openly and murderously racist than the planters before them. Collective ownership of slaves by the white population as an ideological cornerstone, perhaps?

Yes, what we're likely to see is the slaves passing from the hands of the planters to the hands of the State.
 

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