Re: The GZG Digest V2 #1175

On Fri, 31 May 2002 12:31:05 +0100, "Adam Benedict Canning"
<dahak@dahak.free-online.co.uk> wrote:

>Britains main interest was being able to trade. Southern recognition
>didn't help it because that requires the RN to clear the blockades and
>the benefits were not worth the costs.

British recognition did _not_ require Britain to clear the blockades. It
required Britain to pose the threat and "offer" to mediate between the
two
powers. It is likely that the US would have let the South secede in such
a
case without Britain actually fighting.

>This is where the construct fails. The Confederacy has little value as
>more than a counterwieght to the Union. 

The South also had sugar, cotton, and wood that Britain needed. Cotton
was
eventually developed in other regions (notably Egypt) but the South had
a fair
amount to offer Britain as an ally. The South also had some excellent
possibilities in expansion. California was technically northern
territory, but
it's likely that part of it would have become Confederate.

There's also one really, really important export that doesn't show
itself
until well after the war. Five years after the war is the discovery of
oil in
Pennsylvania. With oil becoming more important, the Confederacy actually
had a
an excellent economic bargaining chip. People forget the US is an oil
producing nation. Oklahoma might have become Confederate, but Texas and
Louisiana already were. All three are oil producing states, Texas in
particular.

>Let the
>Foreign office loose on drawing up a peace treaty and you are likely
>to end up with North-South borders as well as east-west ones. Not
>because Britian cares about the Indians [though it would go down well
>with Her Majesty] but because then we can assimilate bits of the
>continent we want. Californa when the gold rush starts for example.

That's not likely at all. Neither side would allow a British designed
peace
treaty. The border between the Union and Confederacy was mostly decided
much
earlier. The biggest sticking point would be the border states and the
territories. Manifest Destiny would determine that the territories would
be
American, whether Confederate American or Union American.

Oh, and the gold rush started well before the war. 

>Having won a war that is has taken as it triggering clause the right
>to have slavery that is unlikely without some external force.

That's a very simplified view of what triggered the war. The South
fought the
war based on the right to maintain its own institutions. The states
seceded
because of intense dislike for the Republican party and the power of the
north, now so overwhelming in population size that they could control
the
government themselves. The Republican party, and Lincoln himself, stated
many
times before, during, and after the election that it was not their
intention
to abolish slavery. This is from Lincoln's inaugural address:

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the
institution
of slavery in the States where it exists; I believe I have no lawful
right to
do so, and I have no inclanation to do so. Those who nominated and
elected me
did so with the full knowledge that I had made this and many similar
declarations, and had never recanted them."

Where slavery was an issue was with the new territories entering into
the
Union. The Missouri compromise basically said that a state entering
north of
the Mason-Dixon line was non-slave and that to the south would be a
slave
state. As the war loomed, this was being altered. The Republican Party
wanted
all new states to be free, while most of the slave states wanted the
territory
to be able to decide for itself. The idea that a new state would be free
was
seen as an attempt to outnumber the slave states to the point where
eventually
the power would lie to eliminate slavery, totally. (I'm not entirely
sure what
the worry was with this, other than the fact that if enough new states
joined
the Union a consensus could have been reached in order to ammend the
Constitution, outlawing slavery. There was also the fear of having a
place for
slaves to run to where they could be free, but federal law already
required
captured slaves to be returned to the their masters.)

What Southerners feared most was a complete and sudden abolition of
slavery.
Northern anti-slavery factions were loudly claiming that slavery was an
abomination (which, of course, it was). However, they didn't produce any
ideas
on how to go about abolishing slavery. Should slave owners be
compensated for
freed slaves? Should slaves themselves be compensated? Should all the
slaves
be freed at once (with a sudden pool of cheap labour flooding the local
market)? Should slaves be freed slowly? The Abolitionists wanted slavery
eliminated without thinking about what effect that would on the economy
and
social structure of the slave states.

The powerful in the South didn't want slavery abolished at all because
they
owned slaves and needed them as cheap labour. The average Southerner
couldn't
afford slaves, but fear mongering about what would happen when all the
slaves
were freed worried them. At the same time, there were plenty of people
in the
South that found slavery abhorrent. The greatest minds of the South new
that
slavery's days were numbered. 

The most likely situation is about a decade or so of slavery as it was
seen
before the war, with a plan slowly emerging to dismantle "that peculiar
institution". It would probably be something along the lines of the next
generation of slaves becoming free when they reached a certain age. It
would
take another 20 or so years to implement, but the institution of slavery
would
be dismantled. The big point, and the point that caused the war, was
that the
decision to free the slaves would be made by the individual state, not a
central government. 

It would also be dismantled in a haphazard manner. The Confederacy
fought for
states rights. Each state would be able to decide slavery for itself.
Virginia
would probably abolish slavery before Mississippi, for instance.
Ironically,
Virginia didn't even want slavery in the first place. Slavery was
foisted on
it... by Britain, when Virginia was a colony. 

> Other than the possibility of the CSA balkanising over the issue and
> the hardening British attitudes on slavery [Note the RN was definetly
> against it, because they could condemn slave trading vessels as
> prizes, and British Naval Officers have an almost pavlovian response
> to the chance to gain prize money], 

The slave trade had already been abolished in the United States prior to
the
Civil War. Trading in slaves taken from Africa, etc. was illegal within
the
US. This didn't stop American ships from trading in slaves, it just
meant that
instead of selling them in the South they were sold in Cuba and Brazil.
Ironically, most of the ships still involved in the slave trade were
Northern.
The Royal Navy declared, in September 1860, that 85 vessels had sailed
from
American ports to be used in the slave trade. Of ten American ships
captured
by the RN off the coast of Africa, 7 of them were from New York.

> You like Turtledove assume that
> there would be a peace lasting decades. There is a good chance the
> Union will want a rematch if nothing else.

I've studied the Civil War for long enough to understand the reasons men
fought in the war. Northeners that fought for reasons other than money
or
being drafted usually fought to preserve the Union. It is unlikely that
they
would have tried to force the Confederacy back into the Union once they
had
left. Quite a few fought to abolish slavery, but more were quite against
fighting on behalf of slaves. The mutinies in early 1863 over the
Emancipation
Proclamation show that quite clearly.

If the Confederacy had succeeded, Lincoln's government would have lost
the
next election. The Democrats would have gotten in, and they were leaning
towards peace in the first place. That would mean another four years at
least
of peace, and more than likely close to a decade. Commerce between these
two
nations would stabilize, the Union would turn its attention to westward
expansion, and it's very likely that the two would be peaceful. If any
fighting would occur, it would be during westward expansion. My guess,
though,
is that the two nations would cooperate in order to put down the
Natives.

>From what I know of Americans, this seems to fit their character the
most,
too. Americans have an amazing propensity to forgive their former
enemies.

Where I depart from Turtledove is his pushing the two sides into war
later on
(Turtledove most assuredly doesn't agree with "decades of peace"). I
think
both sides were quite capable of developing a diplomatic solution.

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@hyperbear.com
http://www.hyperbear.com

"At long last, the earthy soil of the typical, 
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