Slitherine

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This thread isn't meant to be political so let's keep it friendly.

Consider this what-if: the Confederacy fights the Union to a bloody draw (outright victory was never very likely), and an armistice is concluded.

My question is this: could the Confederacy expect to survive as a political entity? It's components were fanatical about states' rights, and equally fanatical in their opposition to a central government. Without inspirational leadership (Davis doesn't strike me as having been much of an inspiration), wouldn't the Confederacy have disintegrated from within, led by such likely candidates for further secession as Texas and Georgia?

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ORIGINAL: Terminus

This thread isn't meant to be political so let's keep it friendly.

Consider this what-if: the Confederacy fights the Union to a bloody draw (outright victory was never very likely), and an armistice is concluded.

My question is this: could the Confederacy expect to survive as a political entity? Its components were fanatical about states' rights, and equally fanatical in their opposition to a central government. Without inspirational leadership (Davis doesn't strike me as having been much of an inspiration), wouldn't the Confederacy have disintegrated from within, led by such likely candidates for further secession as Texas and Georgia?

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The Europeans, having outlawed slavery earlier in the century (England, I believe, in 1803 or so), were at the time insufferably 'holier-than-thou' toward the people living on this continent.

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Lloyds of London...

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ORIGINAL: christof139
I must have been thinking of the Beatles and Led Zepplin in Leeds, UK.

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The Beatles famously came from Liverpool. The members of Led Zeppelin came from various different parts of England; none of them from Leeds.

Perhaps you were thinking of Live at Leeds, the Who's 1970 album?

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ORIGINAL: Terminus
My question is this: could the Confederacy expect to survive as a political entity? Its components were fanatical about states' rights, and equally fanatical in their opposition to a central government. Without inspirational leadership (Davis doesn't strike me as having been much of an inspiration), wouldn't the Confederacy have disintegrated from within, led by such likely candidates for further secession as Texas and Georgia?

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ORIGINAL: pzpat
Turtledove believed that the Europeans, especially the English, would have used their considerable influence to pressure the South to end the institution of slavery, and he believed that the South would have acquiesced around 1867, possibly 1868. But it's been quite a while since I read the book; I may have misremembered some of the details. Without institutionalized slavery to continue the Southern economy as it had been, the South would have suffered, and there might have been a possibility that the Southern states would have rejoined the Union at some time.

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I don't believe the Southern economy ever really needed slavery. It had plenty of poor people of various colours, with no generous government payouts available, and therefore willing to do whatever work was available for whatever pay was available. The work would have got done regardless.

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ORIGINAL: Jonathan Palfrey

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ORIGINAL: Terminus
My question is this: could the Confederacy expect to survive as a political entity? Its components were fanatical about states' rights, and equally fanatical in their opposition to a central government. Without inspirational leadership (Davis doesn't strike me as having been much of an inspiration), wouldn't the Confederacy have disintegrated from within, led by such likely candidates for further secession as Texas and Georgia?

A good question, but I think it's one of those imponderables. Surely there would have been problems. Could they have been resolved? We'll never know.

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ORIGINAL: tc237
He truly believed that if the North lost the war, the idea of Freedom would vanish from the Earth.

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Although I recognize Lincoln's point of view (which you express well), and I agree there was some risk of bad consequences following from a permanent split in the Union, nevertheless there is something odd about defending freedom by imposing an unwanted government on people who have rejected it.

The right and the ability of a population to determine its own government is a valid and useful freedom, and to destroy that freedom with much violence in the name of some other freedom must be a somewhat controversial exercise.

It was an odd war in that at least three different kinds of freedom were at issue in it: the individual freedom of the slaves, the freedom of American states to withdraw from the Union, and whatever sort of freedom Lincoln was fighting for (perhaps he had a clear picture of it in his own mind, but it's not clear from what I've read).

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ORIGINAL: tc237
"Our common country is in great peril, demanding the loftiest views, and boldest action to bring it speedy relief. Once relieved, its form of government is saved to the world; its beloved history, and cherished memories, are vindicated; and its happy future fully assured, and rendered inconceivably grand."
--From the July 12, 1862 Appeal to Border States Representatives

"We have, as all will agree, a free Government, where every man has a right to be equal with every other man. In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed. There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one. There is involved in this struggle the question whether your children and my children shall enjoy the privileges we have enjoyed."
--From the August 18, 1864 Remarks to the 164th Ohio Regiment

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"Every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed"? If Lincoln really believed what he was saying, he seems to be been suffering from paranoid delusions. More likely, he was just trying to maintain his weary country's fighting spirit by deliberately demonizing his opponents.

< Message edited by Jonathan Palfrey -- 3/3/2007 3:01:01 PM >

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If the Union was broken then there would not have been the United States, and perhaps Secession would have occurred again in both the new CSA and amongst the remaing States of the old USA, the Domino Theory occurring and recurring, and consequently reducing all the States of the Old Union into a multitude of independent but weaker and squabling political entities resulting in near anarchy.

Perhaps Lincoln and others were not paranoid, but rather realistic in their perception of the present and the future.

Chris

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Lincoln was not paranoid. At the time of the founding -- four score and seven years earlier -- virtually every government was a monarchy and it was generally thought that democracies were too unstable to survive. By 1860, Britain was a parliamentary monarchy, but how many other countries at that time could be called democracies? If the U.S. experiment in democracy had come apart at the seems, that would have given both argument and impetus to authoritarian regimes.

(in reply to christof139)

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ORIGINAL: General Quarters
Lincoln was not paranoid. At the time of the founding -- four score and seven years earlier -- virtually every government was a monarchy and it was generally thought that democracies were too unstable to survive. By 1860, Britain was a parliamentary monarchy, but how many other countries at that time could be called democracies? If the U.S. experiment in democracy had come apart at the seems, that would have given both argument and impetus to authoritarian regimes.