What if The Union had never found Robert E Lee's Special Order 191? It was that order that had all the information on the CSAs troop deployments and alot of other strategic information among other things. If we (The North) had NOT found that in all likelyhood the Confederate States would have won and stayed an independent nation. And then If the Union had lost who would they have allied with during WWI & II? Just think about it. (If you like this kind of thing there is a book by a guy called Harry Turtledove called How Few Remain) While slavery most likely still would have been abolished in the CSA it would have taken ATLEAST another generation if not two.And we would have probably fought the south again within a generation anyway.....

Everything would be different. And I don't think we would be talking about it. The current history would be so flippin different!

Holy cow...

But thinking about it... slavery would have lasted 50 more years and ultimately abolished because of the trading embargo imposed by England (in those days world power #1) and the rest of Europe. Lincoln would have been hanged instead of shot. The industrial development of the USA would have been retarded by 75-100 years. Britain would still be world power #1 if they could have won WWI without the USA (very plausible because at the time the USA entered the war Germany was blowing out of the "last hole").

There's an author, Harry Turtledove who publishes books dealing with alternative history. One of his series involves the premise of the South winning the Civil War. I think that the "what if" premise in these novels is that someone goes back in time and gives the Confederacy 20th century gun technology.

But the emphasis is not on time travel. It's on the psychological consequences of this time warp for various historical figures. For example, I think Robert E. Lee ends up freeing the slaves because after seeing them in combat he can no longer morally justify slavery. He (ie- Turtledove) interjects one huge quirk into history, then goes back to reality and tries to project a logical future. The bizarre irregularity isn't his focus. The focus is an extremely realistic examination of what various people would do under alternate circumstances.

see wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Turtledove

The big question would the confederates in WWI and/or even a WWII sided with Germany? Hmmm. I don't know?

Well... the Confederacy was an agriculturally-based society. If they persisted on that track for an extra 90 years, they would have been a third world country by 1940.

Maybe the question is, "Would Germany have allied with them? What would they have had that Hitler would want?" Another parallel question is, "Would the Union States be a significant military force if they hadn't benefited from the proceeds of the South?"

Maybe if the North and South had split, North America wouldn't be of much interest to European countries and wouldn't be a player in WWII.

IF... the agriculturally based Confedarcy defeated the industrial North and continued to develop, the British would look to them as a threat. While Germany was a growing threat in Europe.

Would Germany allied with them? a good question... If Hitler combined forces scientifically and joined militaries. They would threatened the world, and I don't think Russia or China would of stop them. IMHO and taken with a grain of salt.

I have no real idea what would have happened but it would surely have been different good or bad well lets just say im glad it happened like this

A German/Southern alliance? The Science and Precision of the Germans meets the Culture of the South:

Ve haff created die Perfekte Food, ja? Die Uber-Grit.*

--Jaylemurph

*Although it's a well-known fact the perfect Southern food is barbeque.

How about a German with a Southern accent. Can you imagine.

Well, the immediate ramifications would have been a possible British and French military/logistical intervention, especially the French, who were eager to play a role. Also, Copperhead Democrats would have seen a big boost in numbers during the 1862 election. Lincoln and the Repubs would've tried to continue the war as best as they could, but they would have been severely handicapped. I don't think Lincoln would have been hanged, but it would have been nearly impossible to win re-election in 1864 barring any miraculous victories by the north between late 1862 and 64.

Although, while a Union victory after a defeat at Antietam (or wherever the armies ended up fighting in this What If scenario) would have been difficult, it would not have been impossible. Lincoln wasn't happy with McClellan, and, after another defeat, would have had enough support to replace him. Lincoln would have seen the need to move quickly, as Lee would still be in the north and somewhat weak and tired after the fight. If Lincoln wasn't too distressed after the defeat, he would have immediately replaced McClellan with one of the more aggressive generals, like Hooker or Burnside, who could organize reinforcements quickly and march fast (Hooker and Burnside were excellent at both, and Hooker was a good general who gets a bad rap for Chancellorsville). It's reasonable to assume that the What If defeat at Antietam would be due to McClellan withdrawing after a brief engagement thus giving Lee the field, so it's likely that the casualties would not have been as bad as the real Antietam and most of the Army of the Potomac would still be intact (I'm gonna go with this outcome, but even if it's wrong and the casualties were similar to Antietam, the North would have had to lose something like 40,000 men with minimal damage to the Southern army in order for the south to have the numerical advantage afterwards).

Let's say Hooker avoided his wound at the real Antietam and was given command. I'd say that if the above is correct, which I think it most likely is, Hooker (who always aimed to impress and show-up everyone) would have reorganized the army quickly, used the cavalry effectively like at Chancellorsville to attack Lee's exposed supply and stragglers, and then collided with a tired, undersupplied southern army as soon as he could.

Albeit the stars would have had to allign pretty well for this to happen and if it did I'm giving Hooker a pretty favorable prediction. But I'd say no matter what, the chances of a significant Union victory after the What If loss at Antietam would be about 4 to 1 against. Not that far off, though.

I dunno, I've always thought about this. Let me know what you guys think.

I doubt it, you have to remember that the US entered the war after the sinking of the Lusitania, which was transporting manufactured goods from the US to England. Industrialization in the US would have had a severe drawback if slavery would have been upheld. Slaves don't make good industrial workers.

So, I doubt it.

The point you are not getting is that there would have been no Hitler. Germany would have eventually surrendered in WWI, but a year or so later. The Versailles treaty would have been totally different with both the allies and the Germans being on the ground. There would have been no occupation of the Rhineland due to lack of forces/will. All that would have kept the Kaiser in Power. Instead of Hitler there would have been a Wilhelm III after Wilhelm II. Given the political spectrum under the Kaiser the NSDAP would not have a chance- much less absolute power.

ED:GARBLE

The sinking of the Lusitania was a pretext for the United States to enter the war. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian-Hungarian throne, was the pretext that precipitated the war in Europe. The real cause was that the world changed so rapidly during the 19th century. Countries relationships to each other were drastically altered by the increased ease of transportation. Industrialization had drastically changed the lifestyles of the middle class (mass production allowed them to own more). Old political alliances no longer made sense because the commercial needs of the various countries had changed.

The western world was headed for war, and the specific incidents that triggered it aren't the true causes of the conflict. The Union had gone through these changes too. They were connected to Europe on all sorts of levels and it was inevitable that they'd be dragged into the war. It's hard to know what would have happened in the case of the Confederacy. Their society worked on the medieval feudal system, so they wouldn't have experienced the psychological trauma of modernization (assuming that they continued with their agricultural system). The Confederacy would not have had much to offer Germany. The fact that they were next to the Union and would be transporting their goods across an ocean would have been a huge problem. Northern airplanes could have easily taken their ports out. They didn't have the materials (metal) to have an airforce.

LOL. I lived in Bavaria for a while and took Berlitz German courses. Before that, I lived in South Carolina. The result was an auditory train wreck.

The Confederates may have declared war on Germany. One of the pretexts for the US war against Germany in the Great War was an intercepted communication between Germany and Mexico, urging Mexico to attack the US to prevent their entry in the war; in exchange, the Germans promised the return of Texas and the Southwest.

That is a likely scenario, but a mostly agricultural society would not been able to tip the balance in any direction I am afraid. That would be as if Argentina would have declared war on the Kaiser. He first would have had too look it up on his map before sending his ships there.

I'm not even sure the Confederacy would have lived long enough to see World War I and especially World War II. Their currency was already crap by the time of Antietam and as someone said earlier slavery would have to be abolished after so many years anyway due to European pressure to do so. The main European interest in the south was cotton, and already England and parts of France were increasing their own production: that's why it wasn't imperative that the two immediately join the Am. Civil War when it began. It seems like the South would have either slowly negotiated a return to the United States or would have sunk to the point of being so weak that they basically became colonies of the North, who would either forcibly control the south or indirectly control it through economic and humanitarian aid IMO.

Good probable scenario

I think it is interesting how everyone assumes the south was a bunch of dumb hicks who couldn't have prospered under the Confederate flag. It is possiblr that they would have caught and surpased the North in many regards. I tend to agree with most of you, but who knows. Different laws could provide different and unforseen results.
Oh yeah. Remember Grant owned slaves and Lee did not.

People in an agricultural environment are not dumber than those in a industrial one. Their priorities are different and therefore the industrial development slower.

There is this false assumption that the abolishment of slavery was because of the "goodness of the hearts" of the people of the North. While I don't doubt that there was a very vocal minority rallying for it, the great majority could not care less. More important was that little minority that needed industrial workers.

To understand the difference between an industrial worker and a farm slave we first have to see the "maintenance". On a farm you have a building that houses the slave, even if only the barn. You grow the food you need for him/her and so on. So as far as that, it is not a cost factor.

For an industrialist these are very well cost factors. All needs that have to be purchased, and more likely than not, at a higher price than the wages first paid to the liberated slaves.

So, besides the different priorities we would have had the cost factor hampering the industrial growth in the US.

The Confedarcy had no chance to win the war, they could of delayed the envitable by a few more years, maybe a slave revolt would of taken place if the North was seen to be losing and the last hope for freedom would breed desperation. The South had no Industry to keep up with the needs of the military as the SOuth was being depleted the North was hiting its stride. Unless France or Britain interfered directly the south had no chance. If by chance the South did ceced I think the North would not change I think the US might of been actually better off.

It is an iteresting post but noone can give an even close to be true answer.

The point is it is not a question of what would the US would look like but what would the world look like?

Would we had a WWl, WW2, Irack, Taliban, A-Bombs, Rockets, Men on the Moon.......? Remember, just the faith of one person can change the whole history.

It's not a matter of thinking that the Confederacy was a bunch of dumb hicks. It's a matter of looking at the locations of the various natural resources in North America and seeing that they didn't have access to iron mines (for example) . They did have oil, but at the time of WWI I don't think that was such a big deal.

I guess also, I don't see social systems that involve slavery as being all that strong. A huge portion of their population would hate the government.

If still separate, North would have sided with Hitler. Globalist bunch, Centralized power.
Slavery would have been abolished without the war...The war was not about Slavery but to preserve a corrupt union.

If the South managed to push through the North's propaganda, the people of the North may have joined the South and formed a new union, returning it to the Constitution.
"The Constitution may not be perfect, but it's better than what we've got now..." - (someone else said that but don't remember who)

The States should be soverign imo giving only specific and few powers to any central "union".

Ohh interesting it interest me to see the various opinions

Well remember that Britain and France would probably have encouraged the CSA to free the slaves by 1914 so my big thought here is "Would the US have been allied with the Central Powers or the Allied Nations?"

Probably neither. The US as emerging industrial power and later as world power in waiting would have made a good ally. For the US whatever was happening in Europe was not their beef and the Europeans just wanted the US in 'cause none of the sides could have won WWI with them remaining in an acceptable shape that would not end in social anarchy.

The US knew that if it wanted to be a world power they had to show something for it. A mostly agricultural nation would not have longed, nor would it have been capable of, being a world power.

The Monroe doctrine would have prevailed.

Lee did own slaves. He inherited them through somebody, his father-in-law or something. He did eventually release them, though. I don't think Grant owned any, the only thing I could find said his wife owned a few and Grant was alloed to legally free them. I don't think the South were a bunch of dumb hicks, but I also don't think they had the industrial nor the economic capacity to function as a separate country. The North, on the other hand, would have been hurt by the loss of Southern agriculture, but they had more of a mix of industry and agriculture and I think they would have been able to continue into more or less what we see today.



I don't think so. We can make a valid prediction based on the situation beforehand and the individuals who were making the history.

Let me say it this way. What if Grant died at childbirth? He would not be around during the civil war. What if slavery never happened? What if the English soldier who did not pull the triger tho shoot Hitler in WWl actualy shot him? Every person on this planet affects directly or indirectly the life of every other person. Only one link missed and the history changes.
Think about somthing that you have done in your past. What if you had done it differently? How would have this affect your life and the life of your surrounding?
Maybe the woman that you pulled back before she got hit by a car would have died if you did not do so. Her child would have grown up with a stepmother or in an orphanage. The child would not be a lawyer now. The lawyer who prooved a convict innocent. Saved him from the death penalty. The convict was freed and got married. They had a child which grew up to invent a cure for an illness that saved millions of lifes or the child grew up and invented a weapon that destroyed millions of lifes. All that because you pulled back the woman from crashing in to a car.

You see now why we can not make a valid prediction?

Wow the SOuth was fighting for the constitution???? What??? Listen the first goverment collpapsed in the US because it had a weak central goverment. Talking about the North being corrupt look at the south they were lazyu hicks who didnt work and colleceted money.

Now are saying that because you beleive that or because you read it in Harry Turtledoves book Drive To The East?

Can't say I recall reading that book Romeo, sorry.

And yeah Oxy... the south were lazyu hicks who didnt work and colleceted money unlike the carpetbagging northern lawyers or the usurping northern politicians who know from DC what's best for Florida.

Its the south that elected Our great leader. So FLorida cant really make those kind of desicions any more.

Are you saying the South Elected Lincoln, or Your Leader is Kim Il Sung, or States don't have the power they should?
I'd agree with the latter if that was your intended point.

I meant GWB

If you don't say Dubya in the South they don't know who you mean.

ED:TYPO

I mean the guy who is running the Free world but cant pronounce Nuclear.

I love it when someone tries to insult another "type" of people and uses words like "collpapsed", "goverment", "lazyu", and "colleceted". I know I mistype things from time to time, but sheesh. I just guess some of us lazy southerners take our time so we can use things like punctuation as well......

Edit:
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...

Oh.

So I'm guessing the Red would be called the "South" and the Blue would be called the "North"?
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Hip hip hurray, after all these years the South has won.

As the map rather elegantly shows, it's wasn't just the South that elected Bush.
It was the majority of the country

--Jaylemurph

You're asking different things. If you stop your car just before hitting someone, you know that if you hadn't you would have possibly killed them and gone to jail. That's a reasonable prediction of the immediate consequences. If you say the person you almost hit had never been born and then ask what happens years later, that sends history down some chaotic parallel universe. Anything is possible. Maybe another person would be there in their place, maybe not; maybe they saved your life sometime before this event and you never knew. It becomes jibberish and irrelevent.

Asking what would have happened in WWI and WWII had Antietam gone the other way is pretty outlandish, but I think its consequences on the result of the Civil War can be reasonably guessed.

Actually the CSA was fighting for THIER constitution which if you read it was not that different from our own.

Preamble
We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.


If you want to read the rest, go here.

I understand what you mean and your point. Although it seems that my post is a bit of topic it is not.
Here is why: If the civil war had a different outcome so the deaths would have been different and the history would have changed. How? We can only speculate but we can not give a plausible or valid answer.
You say jibberish and irrelevent. But, with whom would I have exactely the same discussion if you weren't born?
Everything happens for a reason.

Most military historians say the South would have won Had Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg been successful it would have split the Union in half. .
I think it was about 35 years later that oil was discovered. Just the State of Texas has the eighth largest GNP and economy in the world.

First, let me say that I love Turttledove. Read everything he has put out. And from reading his Wiki entry, I got a lot more of his books to go.

I think the North would have won, but it might have taken a lot longer. But the North had so many advantages in what would have been a war of attricion. While people mention the industry and matterial advantage the North had, no one has mentioned the agracultural advantage the North had. And how much that infulenced the war. The food production of the old Northwest Terratory (Ohio to Nebraska) was starting to come on line. And one of the chief markets was Britain. Some 3000 ships a year was sailing to English ports with wheat at the end of the war. England needed southern cotton. But you can not eat cotton. And Britain was becoming dependant on Northern grain products.

Plus you can not under estimate the importance of slavery to England. From the banning of slavery in England in 1807 and in the colonies 30 years later, England become the worlds leading country in the suppression of slavery. And while the aristrocracy favored the South - the middle and lower classes were solidly anti-slavery. Even when the cut off of cotton closed English cotton mills. As Gen, Longstreet said to the British Army observer in the movie "Gettysburg"..... "Lets face it, England will never intervene in support of a slave owning South. We should have freed the slaves, and then fired on Fort Sumpter".

As civil war writer Shelby Foote said in Ken Burn's 1990 PBS TV series The Civil War -- The North fought the war with one hand tied behind its back. It never mobilized to the extent the South did. The South had some 6 million white population. The North nearly 30 million. There is an old rule of thumb that a mobilized war society can put 10% of its population into uniform and still be productive in food and industry. The South exceaded that. The North did not. The North had 1.1 million men in the Union Army at its greatest size. If you had seen total mobilization, then the North could have had nearly a 3 million man army. Compared to 600,000 to 700,000 in the Confederate Army at its greatest. And the Union Army would have been better equipted. And by the last year and a half of the war, well lead and seasoned. While the South was having manning problems. In part because so many farmers were enlisted, and had to be given leave to return to their farms. Which infulenced the ability of the South to conduct campaigns until these soldier/farmers could return. A problem the North did not have as much with. The North could be a year round army if it needed to. At the end, the Southern Army was short during planting and harvest times. Or run out of food. Both of which eventually happened.

Also facing the South was the disunity within the Confederacy. After Shermans March through Georgia, Governer Brown in 1865, succeaded from the Confederacy and Georgia State forces stopped being a factor outside of the state. With supplys from Georgia drying up. And there was parts of the South that were hostile to the idea of succession. Specially in Eastern Tennessee, Western North Carolina and Northern Alabama wich maintained its loyalty to the Union. One of the things that hampered the Confederate Armys responce to Sherman. It was already busy putting down rebellions in the Union sympathizing areas of the South. In fact, during the Civil War, Union soldiers from the South provided at least one brigade of troops from every state of the Confederacy. With the exception of Florida, which was so underpopulated, that it could only contribute a regiment. While it was well known of the Southern officers quitting to join the South, only 28 Union enlisted men joined their officers to go south at the start of the war. While there was the Northern problems with the Copperhead Movement, the lack of unity within the South is not as well know but still very telling and morale damaging.

So the South was doomed once the North got through the first 2 years of the war. Just as with Japan in WW-II, both needed a knock out blow in the first months of the war to ensure victory. Get past that stage and the North would eventually prevail.

I always liked that quote. In the North life was continuing much the way it had been. The Government was sponsoring expansion west with land offers and, compared to other wars, cities went under martial law rarely. Meanwhile it seems like the Southern government thought only of the war, at the expense of the economy and citizens. Foote concludes that if the South had won more battles the North simply would've brought out the other hand.

To all those who claim we would never know, we are playing equation with several hundred thousand variables, we know that. We are well aware of the fact that a single person, even if only a private in any of these armies, could have changed the whole outcome.

Our guesstimate can only be based on the changes that occurred because of the outcome of the civil war.

If we go into minute details we will end up with a million possibilities so we stay with the macro results.

Is this speculative? Very, in fact we have no way of ever knowing if any of our speculations would be correct because we cannot change history to see if we are right or wrong. So please don't take this as scientific. Its just a game of what if.

Fate is a very delicate matter but whatever happens happens for a reason ((not thinking in religous terms))