Comments on: What If…?

By: mbf1978

mbf1978 — Tue, 17 Aug 2004 17:56:25 +0000

its certainly hard to see two seperate nations, but that is because of our current economic system. While back in the 1800′s, the South was almost totally agricultural, but now every state has industry of some kind. Also, remember that the discovery of oil has changed things. Alabama and Florida are huge bastions for shipping, Atlanta is the South’s major hub when it comes to air travel and Miami is the gateway to Latin America. That said, it certainly would have been interesting to see how things would have worked. Perhaps after say 1870, many of the Southern states would have realized the need to maintain relationships with the Northern states and they would have been readmitted into the Union without war. Certain states like Mississippi might have lagged behind, but eventually Virginia, North Carolina and others would probably have come back. As for slavery, I have no answer for that one, in many ways we still see the residuals of slavery inthe workplace. Without the labor laws enacted last century it would likely have resulted in quasi-slave labor in our factories, mills, etc. Look now how certain powers are trying to keep the minimum wage down, limit overtime and employee benefits, etc. Why? because it is economical to do so. Slavery was all about economics and not racism. It became synonymous with racism however due to the bitterness and ignorance of the common folk in the South.

Of course, I could be wrong with everything I’ve said. Its pure speculation on my part based on minimal observations during my live in the South.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Tue, 17 Aug 2004 16:08:22 +0000

One thing that you’re leaving out in your assumption of the red/blue dichotomy is that the red states are in the south. As a citizen of Colorado, and having lived in the West for almost my entire life, I think that you’re leaving out a huge chunk of land that wasn’t a part of the Confederacy or the Union– although the west was owned (except Alaska) by the time of the Civil War, it wasn’t divided into states and the slavery question had not been answered any further west than Kansas. Perhaps if the Confederacy had been allowed to secede then the US would have been split into three parts– the north, the south, and the west. California would have been cut off from the north and might have become it’s own country as well, making the US like Europe– which would ultimately mean that it would never become a world power, because it would be too concerned with the squabbling of the city-states within it.

By: Amanda

Amanda — Tue, 17 Aug 2004 15:03:42 +0000

Y’all know you’d miss us Southerners, warts and all. ;)

By: MFB

MFB — Tue, 17 Aug 2004 08:12:33 +0000

Your suggestion about “no sci-fi” is a bit ridiculous, since counterfactual histories are science fiction by definition (just that it’s a lot duller when done by historians rather than science fiction writers).

My opinion is that there would have been a war of revenge, probably around 1900, which would have reunited the United States but left it shattered (possibly with sputtering guerrilla war for a decade or so).

It’s very difficult to say what kind of society the North would have ended up with, but I’d say that the big business oligarchy that ran things anyway during that period would have been more intense and civil liberties probably even worse than they actually were. As a result the post-reunion conditions would probably have been quite unpleasant.

Incidentally, Germany would probably have won World War I, since the U.S. would have been in no space to intervene in 1917 — and probably too short of cash to lend the Allies money in 1914-1916.