Revisionist History: What If the South Had Won the Civil War? (Editorial)

Spetember 26, 2004 | Gary L. Livacari

[GaryL]

The FReeper Foxhole: As the federal government grows bigger, stronger, and more corrupt with each passing year, maybe it’s time to dream about how life would be today if the South had won the Civil War.

Richmond Times-Dispatch, Dateline: July 4th, 1863, Gettysburg, PA:

PICKETTS’ CHARGE SMASHES NORTHERN CENTER – YANKS FLEE IN DISARRAY! WEARY LINCOLN SUES FOR PEACE! CONFEDERACY VICTORIOUS!

Am I the only one who dares to speculate about how life would be today if the South had actually won the Civil War? I know, I know….“How dare he bring this up! Arrest this raving racist at once! Send for the Though Police!” It has to be the ultimate violation of political correctness to even broach this subject!

As conservatives, can we be happy that a segment of the country that fought valiantly for limited government, states rights, and the rule of law under a strong constitution was defeated? Indeed, one of the most malicious consequences of the war was the beginning of the vast shift of political power to the central government in Washington, with the resultant monopoly of power that the federal government extends over us today. This shift came, of course, at the expense of traditional Jeffersonian personal liberty and freedom, and a concomitant emasculation of the power of the individual states. It was also accompanied by a gradual corrupting of the Executive branch (which was virtually completed in the scandalous administration of Bill Clinton}, a corrupting of the rule of law, and a progressive coarsening of the culture - all outcomes, I might add, that serve as testimony to the wisdom of Lord Acton – a strong contemporary defender of the South – about the corrupting influence of absolute power. This is hardly what I would call a favorable result. As a matter of fact, I’d term it an absolute disaster – the Founding Fathers’ worse nightmare! Isn’t this the reason they fought the Revolution in the first place?

But, you say, had the South won, America would never have become the great nation that it became in the 20th century. Well, my response is that monopolies of power are never good – especially in government, as the totalitarian governments of the 20th century have shown us. . If the South had gained its freedom, there would have been two separate governments competing with each other to be efficient and honorable. Explain to me why this is bad. If either government fell short of these ideals, people would have had the option to “vote with their feet” – and option that doesn’t exist today. Competition is always good.

And, no, maybe we wouldn’t have become the “world power” that we became in this the latter half of the 20th century. Why do we assume that this would have been necessarily bad? Consider this: it’s highly unlikely that the two separate nations would have experienced anything besides limited involvement in World War I, especially since one of them – the South – would have been adhering to the wise admonition of George Washington to avoid foreign entanglements. And, as Pat Buchanan and others have suggested, WWI was an unmitigated disaster for Western civilization. Instead of making the world safe for democracy, we helped make it safe for Bolshevism, Fascism, Socialism, and Nazism.

Follow me on this. With limited American involvement, England and Germany would likely have fought it out to a resource-draining stalemate. There would have been no clear-cut winner and no clear-cut loser – and outcome, I might add, immeasurable more favorable than what actually did occur. Our involvement unquestionably tipped the balance against Germany. Without a victorious England and a defeated, humiliated Germany, there would have been no vengeful, retribution-extracting Versailles treaty sapping the German people of their pride and resources. And, it follows, there would have been no occasion for the rise of militant German nationalism, no Hitler, and, quite possibly, no World War II. All and all, not a bad tradeoff, wouldn’t you say? Oh, and I forgot to mention, no victorious Soviet empire after WWII extending communism over half the world.

But, you say, slavery was a monumental evil that had to end! Yes, I agree that slavery was terrible – but I simply disagree with the way it ended. Wouldn’t a period of gradual emancipation – which many Southern leaders were favoring by the 1860’s, although with terms not to be dictated by the North – have been immensely better for all involved, most especially the black slaves themselves? Gradual emancipation over a period of about sixty years was exactly how the North itself ended its association with slavery. Why couldn’t the South be allowed the same solution?

The problem with the Civil War as the solution to slavery was that it destroyed the fabric of Southern society, leading to immense poverty and destitution for the entire South. Would anybody deny that the worse part of this societal destruction was experienced by the freed slaves themselves? And the North wanted no part of the social problems created by freeing the slaves, as the many racist laws restricting the settlement of freedmen in the North indicate. What was the value of receiving freedom without justice?

Before the war, most slaves had a better quality of life than the poor white farmer. The war put an end to that. This massive poverty and total decimation of Southern society also served as the germination for the horrendous, nation dividing post-bellum racial tensions and animosities – the ramifications of which we have with us even today. The conditions of emancipated slaves was so bad that seventy-five years after emancipation, in a 1930’s government study called the Slave Narratives, over 70% of surviving former slaves stated that their standards of living were better before the war. We can all agree that slavery was a monumental evil, but surely gradual emancipation would have been better than this!

As a conservative who longs for limited government and the ideals of the Constitution, I am not ashamed to speculate that quite possibly we would have a better world today had the South won the Civil War. Maybe I’m dreaming, but I think limited government, personal freedom, and higher degrees of racial harmony are what we’d be experiencing. In addition, we would have a clear choice between two governments competing for our approbation. Or maybe you’re content with the rapacious, out-or-control, ever-expanding, corrupt federal government that is overwhelming us today!

[stand watie]

you are LIKELY correct.

the damnyankee radicals of the HATEFILLED north wouldn't have accepted a FREE dixie on their southern border, any more than Iran will willingly accept a FREE Iraq.

BOTH sets of radicals HATE FREEDOM!

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

LOL!

[stand watie]

some of the damnyankees on that thread said that they were PLEASED that my family was SLAUGHTERED like cattle.

damnyankees are nothing if not consistent.

consistently HATEFILLED!

free dixie,sw

[r9etb]

the damnyankee radicals of the HATEFILLED north wouldn't have accepted a FREE dixie on their southern border, any more than Iran will willingly accept a FREE Iraq. BOTH sets of radicals HATE FREEDOM!

Well, you're consistent, if silly.

The cause of conflict would have been the same issue that had caused problems (and threats of war) for 40+ years before the Civil War actually broke out: the status of slaves in lands to the west. The Missouri Compromise, Clay compromise, and Kansas/Nebraska act were all failed attempts to resolve fundamental differences over whether new territories and states were to be slave or free.

Had the South won the Civil War, then the competition over slave vs. free would have been sharper than before the war, and a second war would have been likely.

The second war, like the first, would have been about the South's unwillingness to do away with slavery. That's just the fact, whether you like it or not.

[stand watie]

sorry, but you are INCORRECT.

chattel slavery would have died an UNlamented death within 10-15 years MAXIMUM (my guess is 5-10 years) according to most scholars of Agricultural Innovation & the Industrial Revolution.

the FIRST WBTS was NOT about slavery either. it was nothing more or less than a war to "preserve the union" (for the North) OR a war for LIBERTY & SELF-determination (for Southrons).

BOTH lincoln, the tyrant AND US Grant said that the war was ONLY about PRESERVING the UNION. (NEITHER wanted to free the slaves. in point of fact, BOTH were stone racists of the robes & hood sort.)

sorry, but that too is FACT.

free dixie,sw

[r9etb]

chattel slavery would have died an UNlamented death within 10-15 years MAXIMUM (my guess is 5-10 years) according to most scholars of Agricultural Innovation & the Industrial Revolution.

That was what Jefferson thought, 70+ years prior to the war. As it happens, however, chattel slavery was actually revived by the invention of the cotton gin. And, given the prevalence of black share-cropping after the war, it is obvious that there was still a very strong demand for the same type of labor that had previously been provided by slaves. Slavery would not have evaporated.

the FIRST WBTS was NOT about slavery either. it was nothing more or less than a war to "preserve the union" (for the North) OR a war for LIBERTY & SELF-determination (for Southrons).

"LIBERTY," unless yout happened to be a black slave, in which case it was a war for your blessed Southrons to keep them in chains. History is clear on the main cause of the sectional tensions: it was slavery. Your southron legislatures even said so in their declarations of secession. And the great Sectional Crises were likewise about slavery.

BOTH lincoln, the tyrant AND US Grant said that the war was ONLY about PRESERVING the UNION.

True. However, your southrons said themselves that their war was about slavery. See the Declarations of Secession for documentary proof. (Not that you're swayed by actual, written facts, but it's fun to show you up as a dupe.)

(NEITHER wanted to free the slaves. in point of fact, BOTH were stone racists of the robes & hood sort.)

Blah blah blah... They were products of their times, and both eventually agreed that freeing the slaves was necessary and correct. The robes and hoods were introduced by the the southron Nathan Bedford Forrest.... You know that, of courst.

You're really quite pathetic, you know. There are plenty of ugly facts to go around in the Civil War. It's almost embarassing to watch you deny the ugliest fact of all.

[stand watie]

don't you WISH you were correct????

the Industrial Revolution's coming to agriculture would have killed off slavery within a FEW years.

actually the 8-row cottonpicker and the steam traction machine, pulled by 8 mules/live steam & ONE man would have demolished the PROFIT in chattel slavery. BOTH machines could do the work of 50-100 persons. (YES, i'm convinced that persons do what is in THEIR own informed self-interest in society. when slavery was no longer PROFITABLE, it would have died.)

i know you'd like for the WBTS to have been a CRUSADE against the "peculiar institution", but that is FALSE & SILLY as a point of view.

IF you can prove i'm wrong about my thesis, PLEASE post your PROOF. otherwise, enough of the "ad hominum" attacks.

free dixie,sw

[r9etb]

i know you'd like for the WBTS to have been a CRUSADE against the "peculiar institution", but that is FALSE & SILLY as a point of view.

I never said that, Mr. Kerry.

I said that the South's war was driven by the desire to maintain slavery. The Sectional Crises, which precipitated the Civil War, were driven by the issue of slavery. Many of the southern legislatures that wrote declarations of secession said flat-out that they were seceding because of slavery. If we grant the premise of this article, we would have to recognize that slavery (its expansion into westward lands) would have continued to be an issue, until the North defeated the South once and for all in a second war (as it certainly would have).

IF you can prove i'm wrong about my thesis, PLEASE post your PROOF. otherwise, enough of the "ad hominum" attacks.

Share-cropping persisted for several decades after the Civil War. Case closed.

[Ol' Sox]

What If the South Had Won the Civil War?

Well, maybe I'd be able to get some decent barbeque up here in Connecticut. ;)

[Heyworth]

actually the 8-row cottonpicker and the steam traction machine, pulled by 8 mules/live steam & ONE man would have demolished the PROFIT in chattel slavery. BOTH machines could do the work of 50-100 persons.

Ah, you've moved onto another thread to propagate that theory. Shall I relate the story of how, when challenged about this alleged machine's effectiveness, you told me, "don't argue with me, argue with the agricultural curator at the Smithsonian," whose name you offered. But curiously, when I e-mailed the man, he not only said that it wasn't his area of specialization, but that he believed I was correct on all counts.

The fact is that that steam tractors were hugely expensive and not really well suited to plowing. Usually they were just driven into a field and used to run belt machines like shuckers. The evidence for this is obvious--tractors didn't replace animal power for plowing anywhere in the US until the 1910s, when the internal combustion tractor came along. As for the cotton-picking machine, the evidence is overwhelming that the Rust brothers developed the first practical cotton harvester in the mid 1930s, and cotton farming wasn't mechanized anywhere in the world until the advent of that machinery and modern herbicides (which eliminated hand chopping) after WW2.

[DJ Taylor]

I'm not so sure whether the military supported Lincoln and the continuation of the war due to loyalty, or whether, by 1864, the troops had begun to take the war personal and only wanted to see the South punished.

Despite Lincoln's promise not to touch slavery where it existed, the South feared Lincoln's Supreme Court appointments and what it would do to upcoming decisions on the constitutional legality of slavery.

[stand watie]

NONE of the southern legislatures authored the so-called "declarations". NONE.

the "declarations" were PRIVATE writings of a handfull of slaveowners. FEW people except the authors read the "declarations";even FEWER cared what the documents said.

the ONLY people who cared deeply about the preservation of slavery was the 5-% of persons who owned slaves.

go do some real research and you'll look SMARTER.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

posting your FALSE & hateFILLED damnyankee nonsense TWICE doesn't make your drivel smarter. otoh, i don't think anyone on FR but you think what you post is factual/smart.

i find it FUNNY that you say that the machines weren't well-suited to ploughing, since SOME of the steam traction machines are STILL being used for that precise purpose in GB.

please, oh great oracle, tell us what is so different about ploughing in England & the USA???? does the fact that the Atlantic Ocean is between the 2 nations MAGICALLY make the steam traction machines NON-functional here in the western hemishere????

better yet, head over to DU, where hateFILLED, IGNORANT, biased "information" is appreciated.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

actually the "military vote" that put lincoln over the top was anything BUT secret ballot.

in many camps, the ballot box for lincoln & the ballot box for voting for little mac were separate boxes. the soldiers in those camps were given a piece of paper & told to go put their vote in one box or the other. surprise, surprise, lincoln OVERWHELMINGLY won those camps totals.

free dixie,sw

[Southack]

The problem with the South winning that war is that overall American military power would have been neutralized. Instead of one vast Arsenal of Democracy, you would have had two great military powers that would have generally cancelled each other out, much like a husband and a wife voting for different political candidates.

As a single power, the combined U.S. was able to overcome the great European stalemate of 1917 as well as defeat the vast warring machines of Japan, Italy, and Germany after 1941.

But a split U.S./Confederacy would have been unable to enforce the Monroe Doctrine in South America (where war would have *again* broken out as European powers allied with opposing USA/CSA factions would have gone to war over colonies there), much less been the decisive factor in WW1 and WW2.

The inevitable result would have been that Europe would have controlled global politics for another century or two, that wars would have been more frequent(Africa and South America and the Middle East would have been constantly warred on for their minerals by various perverse alignments of European and CSA/USA factions), and that poverty would have been higher while population rates lower (due to increased deaths in war and from added poverty).

Decisive victories against Germany would have been out of the question. You'd still have had the Holocaust, only led by the Kaiser due to social pressures rather than by a Hitler type.

You would *not* have Freedom of the Seas. Global movements of goods and people would be highly restricted due to the lack of an all-powerful Navy (this single factor is probably the most overlooked American contribution to current global prosperity).

In short, a split USA/CSA would have kept the world's military and economic powers more closely matched.

A single, all-powerful USA, however, has always tipped significant military and economic conflicts in a single direction, shortening wars and leading to greater economic advancements.

But a split USA/CSA would have turned the Hundred Years war into the Millenium War, if not longer.

And all of this change in power was due to a single horseman. In what we now know as the battle of Antietam, McClellan's forces intercepted Lee's Special Order 191...which were written on parchment and wrapped around 3 cigars...and subsequently dropped by the courier as he rode from Lee's tent to Jackson's camp.

SO 191 detailed Lee's brilliant plan to use most of his forces...but under Jackson's command. With McClellan expecting Lee's own Army to have the superior Southern forces, Jackson's flanking attack could be expected to be a mere diversion...so Lee's plan to have Jackson's attack be the real blow would catch the Union by surprise.

But McClellan had possession of this great plan. However, possession of this plan was quite a dilema. If the SO 191 was a ruse, then an immediate headfirst attack into Lee's full forces would be a disaster for the Union. Did Lee arrange to drop SO 191 on purpose in order to trick McClellan, the Union staff debated?!

On the other hand, if SO 191 was real, then the Union Army could not simply wait in place for Jackson to attack it from one direction and Lee to attack it from the other, framed as it was by the river. Likewise, if SO 191 was real, then attacking Jackson's forces immediately would likewise be a disaster for the Union Army.

So faced with such a delemma, McClellan did the only smart thing (i.e. the low risk option); he advanced only meekly at Lee's forces, forcing a fight with what turned out to be Lee's greatly weakened Army, and thereby moving out of the line of attack by Jackson.

Thus, the September 17, 1862 battle of Antietam is forever viewed as a military "tie" in which McClellan failed to wipe Lee out, even though McClellan's move was a brilliant way to avoid disaster and buy the Union time to get out of its predicament.

...And it was made possible because a single horseman dropped a single piece of paper wrapped around 3 cigars, which were found by 3 illiterate Union soldiers who almost didn't bother to have an officer read what was written therein.

That's how close the world came to perpetual global war among closely matched nations.

The AWB Has Expired - Gun Owners Have Won Again For All Americans!

[stand watie]

btw, there is plenty of evidence that the elites of the north, that owned slaves, planned to KEEP their slaves after the war against the southland was won.

no less a personage than MG Benjamin "THE BEAST" Butler wrote a letter to Sec. Stanton, which laid out a plan to place the freed slaves into a system of "permanent,forced, voluntary labor under military discipline" for a life-long period of servitude. butler said that "darkies are well-suited by nature for servitude under the lash". (fyi, the original of butler's letter is on public display at the New Orleans African-American Museum.)

free dixie,sw

[r9etb]

go do some real research and you'll look SMARTER

Smart like you, you mean? Gosh -- that would mean ignoring things like documented proof. Plus which, I'd have to spit when I shouted things at other posters. In short, I would have to become a bombastic twit. No thanks.

Now to brass tacks. The Texas Declaration of Causes ends with the following:

--We the delegates of the people of Texas, in Convention assembled, have passed an ordinance dissolving all political connection with the government of the United States of America and the people thereof and confidently appeal to the intelligence and patriotism of the freemen of Texas to ratify the same at the ballot box, on the 23rd day of the present month.

Adopted in Convention on the 2nd day of Feby, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one and of the independence of Texas the twenty-fifth.

The referendum election was held as prescribed above, and it passed.

Now, you might call a state convention, and the Ordinance of Secession, and the related Declaration of Causes, "private writings." But I don't, and neither did the Texans. (Indeed, it is difficult to understand how a "private writing" could be used to justify an election and subsequent secession.) The truth of the matter is that and were aware of the Declaration of Causes, and they obviously did care what their Declaration of Causes said.

So your rant is (once again) proven to be delusion on your part.

Now: please stop spreading your neocon(federate) trash.

[r9etb]

btw, there is plenty of evidence that the elites of the north, that owned slaves, planned to KEEP their slaves after the war against the southland was won.

There is also overwhelming evidence that the elites of the north, that owned slaves, did NOT keep their slaves, despite the fact that the war was won.

Now ... what were you saying?