This new film by Spike Lee attempts to answer this question. The film is basically a fake documentary covering what would have happened if the south had won the civil war. It covers all the way up to the present day.
It is a little biased (understatement) and has alot of things in it people might find offensive, but it is still pretty interesting. Please post any thoughts you have on what you think of it, and feel free to speculate o what you think the movie got wrong, and what would have happened in reality.
Of course this misses the whole point of the tarrifs. But the real thing that made me laugh was the CS dept of Energy bit. If the CSA were created to prevent a large central gov, what are the odds that they would have had a dept of energy? Not very high i think.
To quote the JBM page on tvtropes.org about this film
'*So, so many things wrong. The South never could have conquered the North, it didn’t have the manpower. The South never sought to conquer the North, its war aim was to secure its independence. Reuniting with the North would had the same problems for the South that they seceded to get away from: ie, being outvoted in the Senate, House, and Presidential elections. The battle flag is used as a national flag. Dixie is called the national anthem. Britain and France do nothing while an aggressive expansionist slave power conquers half the world. And “slavery defines us as a people”; while there were some who did go to war solely because of slavery, for the most part it was about Lincoln’s Northern industrial backers building their industries with money from the South; before the income tax most federal income came from port tariffs, mainly from the South. Lincoln made the Emancipation Declaration deep into the war, redefining the conflict, while before that he had said that “if I can preserve the Union without freeing a single slave, I will do it.” This mockumentary plays into a common misconception about slavery being the point of the war, while documents from the time show that for both sides it was clearly about money and power (Lincoln wanting to keep power over the South and the money from its port tariffs).
**And how. The idea of slavery surviving in a semi-modern nation (And if the CSA is able to put men on the moon and win world wars, it must be pretty modernized) is pretty ridiculous. Slaves were expensive, and the mass production of modern farm equipment would have rendered slavery obsolete (A tractor is not only cheaper, but doesn’t try to run away). Also, remember that no society stays static. Great Britain was once one of history’s most enthusiastic peddlers of dope and slaves, yet it’s unimaginable that today’s Brits would approve of such things. Oh, I should post-script this by mentioning that this troper is a full-blooded Yankee.’
Also, I know you guys probably aren’t to fond of Howard Zinn(lord knows I’m not), but he makes a pretty good case that slavery would have ended in the south eventually. I mean most of the slaves coming from Africa went to Brazil and slavery was ended there in 1888 by the government simply refusing to enforce the claims of ownership by the masters.
I’ve seen this before. It is a dumb movie. It makes it obvious the makers know very little about the CSA, only that it enforced slavery.
Worst case scenario if the South would have won it would have later looked like white-ruled Rhodesia. But even if you watch the documentary as being about Rhodesia it is still too silly by far.
Given the fate of the original United States before it, I have a cynical feeling that the CSA would have ended up little different than the current USA. Maybe since a CSA would have lacked the Yankee influence that New England provided, the size of the Confederate state would be smaller than it is currently, but given the nature of governments, it would still be much larger than it was in 1861.
It came out with Spike Lee’s production company attached after the original public release, but he didn’t do anything for the movie. It was probably just a deal so Spike Lee got producer credit and the movie got a wider audience.
The CSA federal government had basically the same powers that the US federal government had. Their constitution was just a modification of the original with some big and more smaller changes.
I guess one interesting question would be: Would the CSA have stayed out of the European Wars. Also, the politics of the USA would have looked a lot different without any Southern influence. It would have been New England vs. The MIdwest, maybe they would have split up too