> Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 10:21:04 -0500
Makes no difference, the UK recognised a number of slave using countries
[Brazil for example] without ever being their ally.
> Britain and France were both pretty close to recognizing
Over the blockade and the fact they had managed to stay independant. That is a
fait acompli rather than any sympathy.
> The average Briton was against slavery (the
Less than Americans might think. Abolition got through the Lords without any
major upset and the Conferate "aristocracy" were a bunch of rebellious
colonials with no breeding.
> so the Proclamation would make it politically difficult for
> Britain in particular backed away from Southern recognition.
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 commerce was affected by the war, after all) and would have
Depends how that settlement happened. The British Empires methods for such
things in India wouldn't leave the Confederacy as an ally but a satrap and
economic dependancy.
> The South would then become an ally of Britain.
This is where the construct fails. The Confederacy has little value as more
than a counterwieght to the Union. Thus the British Empire plays the same
diplomatic games on the two of them it plays on France and Germany. Unless it
decides to play the Raj in North America. 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.
> It would probably start to dismantle slavery, though perhaps
Having won a war that is has taken as it triggering clause the right to have
slavery that is unlikely without some external force. If the British then they
are modifying the Confederacies internal politics on a scale they usually
reserve for Indian States that are about to join the Raj.
> In either case, the slavery issue would not prevent Britain
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],
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.
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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.