Lets say that the south won “the war between the states” and Lincoln and his union tyrants lost. Would the South continue to be its own country up to the present day or would it have stayed as the confederate states of america until say the 1870’s when the rest of the union redressed their grievances? What would have happened to British support of the south? When would the south get rid of slavery knowing that the institution would have been economically unpractical because the rest of the world got rid of slavery by 1865?
How about all the wars that have occured since the 1890’s with american involvement? Would they have ever happened? Would a central bank ever exist in the confederate states of america? Would the leaders Jefferson Davis and others diversify the southern economy beyound agriculture?
I am sure there is more but I want to hear your own thoughts as to what you think would have happened.
It’s unlikely that the Confederacy would’ve rejoined the Union, since Britain and France wanted a counterbalance to growing American power, in order to avoid exactly what’s happened. It’s likely that chattel slavery would’ve lived on for a time, but the extremely pro-abolitionist sentiment of the British populace would result in large amounts of pressure to end the institution(the British government could play off a possible row over reorganizing the Confederate army in light of the uselessness of many states’ units during the war). Southern industrialization would be all but guaranteed, since industrialization of agriculture would create a large number of former slaves looking for work would supply an ample labor force to any entrepreneur who knew how to take advantage of the fact(this would also be pushed, perhaps, by European pressure to be a good counter to the North).
What’s most interesting to consider would be the impact on the USA of their decisive defeat in the war. It would likely mean the total discrediting of centralized federal power and possibly the collapse of the union into a much more decentralized federation.
To answer the OP, I think that slavery would have disappeared within a few decades, and this combined with the lack of Civil War damages as well the lack of emigration north and west that resulted from this and the friction created by sudden emancipation would have made the South much wealthier than it was in the early 20th century. There would probably have been no Spanish-American War, and the imperialism and strengthened military that came from this. Involvement in WWI is also extremely doubtful. In general there would have been less centralisation and possibly more autonomy/secession of states. It is therefore doubtful that a central bank would exist in the same way. But who knows: there may have been many, many other terrible things that might have happened which would lead to the 1917 American Revolution!
The CSA Constitution banned the importation of slaves. Thus, buying all the slaves in the South and freeing them would have been such a way better option (but it wasn’t about slavery). Slavery was phasing out anyway, with new technology being developed, having slaves was very inefficient (which it is in general).
Actually, the Confederate constitution permitted the slave trade to exist with the United States alone; it did include a provision that allowed the Confederate congress to blacklist certain Union states(which could theoretically have been used to end the international slave trade completely).