As a man with a great interest in the War Between the States, and a man with some knowledge of that war, people often ask me what I think would have happened if we (the CSA) had won the War of Yankee Agression. That is not the easy question some people think it is, and it has no one good answer. This week's feature is a colection of several of my opinions of what might have happened had we won.

Not all of the following quotes are actually real, however, they are all either real or based upon a real quote and just altered to fit the proposed scenario.

Death By Suicide:

From where shall we expect the aproach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic giant step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never... if destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and its finisher, as a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. -- Abraham Lincoln, President, USA

Had we won the Second American Revolution, it might well have been a short-lived victory, due largely to the reason for the revolution itself: States' Rights. Even during the war, this rallying cry was also a set of fetters for the Confederate Government. Even as great Confederate armies froze to death or marched through the rain in rags, warehouses in North Carolina bulged with new uniforms that could never reach their intended wearers because the governor of North Carolina wanted to assert the sovreignty of the Tarheel State. Even worse was the governor of Georgia. He continually obstructed the war effort and even refused to co-operate with the local military commanders as his own state was being invaded by the armies of Satan Sherman.

Had we won the war, we might very well have destroyed ourselves, or been so splintered that the Yankees could have re-conquored us piecemeal whenever the fit struck them.

Deuxieme Empire:

LaFayette, go away! --Black Jack Pershing, General, US Army

We often forget that ours was not the only North American war of the sixties. There was also trouble in Mexico (when isn't there?). Napoleon III, the emperor of France had installed an Austrian Archduke as Maximillian I of the Mexican Empire. This didn't really work out, as, following our defeat in 1865, Secretary of State Seward reminded Napoleon of the Monroe Doctrine and pointed out the 900,000 man army of bluecoats poised to remove any French army that stayed in Mexico to support Napoleon's puppet king. Consequently, France abondoned Max, but he stayed around anyway (inexplicably loyal to the Mexican people) until some guerillas who favoured democracy captured and murdered him. Had we won the War Against the States, the US Army would not have been in the same position to harrass Maxamillian, and he might well have maintained control of Mexico, with the help of France.

This doesn't really have much to do with North-South relations, but a Mexican Monarchy to the south of us, which would form a base for the might French Army (that sounds like a joke, but at that time it wasn't) would really change the world as we are used to it. Think: French Central America to go along with French Equatorial Africa, et cetera. Furthermore, the French would probably be friendly to the CSA, which would be another thorn in the side of the Yankees.

Manifest Destiny, Part II:

America! America! God shed his grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea. --Katherine Lee Bates, American Songwriter

In the late 1800's, America wanted to expand westward again, but where could it go? The only thing to the west was Hawaii (hmm..... the ancestor of the man who sells Dole pineapples led a revolution there and the Sandwich Islands were quickly annexed --coincidence?) Spanish Phillippines and Spanish Guam. They'd make good coaling stations, not to mentioned we had always wanted some other Spanish real estate, Porto Rigo and CUBA. A trumped-up charge, and away we went. But if the South was still a viable nation, it would be more valuble even than Cuba, and closer to boot. Not to mention, it would teach the Rebs a lesson to be conquored. Rather than having the Spanish-American War, there could be another North-South war, wherein the North's superion numbers and manufacturing capability might prevail in the second round of Blue versus Grey.

We only won one war just to fight another in thiry years.

The War to End All Wars:

What can she do? She cannot come over here. I do not give a d--n about the Confederacy. --Erich Ludendorf, General, German High Command

In 1914, what should have been a small police action on the part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire turned into [perhaps] the worst war in the history of mankind. American isolationists declared it a European war, and in our world, it basically was -- but what if American was like Europe with several powerful, separate (probably hostile) nations. USA. CSA. Maybe the Empire of Mexico.

This chart may beg some explanation. Why is France listed two different ways? Well, if France had maintained a presence in North America, it might not have been a republic by the time of WWI, it might have still been under the Second Empire and Napoleon IV. That is also why Mexico is listed as a potential Allied power; it could very well be a French puppet. I made a mistake in the chart, otherwise it would also be a potential Central power. Why is Italy listed everywhere? Well, Italy was supposed to be a Central power, but it sat out until it saw how the war was going, then switched sides before doing any fighting. Of course, why are the USA and the CSA where they are? Is it just my Southern sympathies playing up? No, it has more basis than that.

If we had won the Civil War, we would probably have been an ally of France and Britain. They needed our cotton, and the Southern leaders were more like European aristocrats that any Yankee industrialist. Furthermore, Yankeedom was full of German immigrants who had been coming ever since a failed revolution in 1848. With the CSA strongly pro-British, the USA would quite possible fall into a Germanic-minded camp, and there could have been trench warfare along Virginia border... poison gas in Nashville... U-boats in Charleston and New York Harbour.... One reason many Europeans (all except Russia, actually) favoured a Southern victory was to split America into manageable bits. Europe could have easily spread her war to this hemisphere.

This might not have been a bad thing, as the Central powers were in the right (sort of) in WWI. Also, Hitler came to power because of how WWI ended, so a German victory, quite possible with the USA's aid, might not have been so bad (in some ways -- no one in France would probably say that). Anyway, such a war might have ended the CSA not long after her fiftieth aniversary.

The Great Depression:

The business of the Confederacy is exports. --Calvin Coolidge, President, USA

This is not a pleasant picture, but it should be considered. The depression would have probably hit the South very hard. We depended upon exports of staple crops for our livelihood, although by this point I am sure the South would have some well-developed industry, and with the whole world closing up shop for a decade, we wouldn't have any foreign markets. This would plunge the entire South into poverty. Of course, as a nation of famers we could probably support ourselves, but we would become for a time a Third World nation, and only the grace of God, or maybe a war, could bring us out of it.

Europe Tries to Commit Suicide. Again:

Remember: no b----rd ever won a war by dying for his country. He won by making the other poor dumb b----rd die for his country. I want you to go out there and kill the enemy. You know, I almost feel sorry for those poor Yankee b----rds... we're going to go through them like cr-p through a goose....--George S Patton, Junior, General, CS Army

This is hardly worth looking at, because by 1939 the world with a still-active Confederacy would probably be too different for Hitler to rise as he did. Nonetheless, here it is.

Yankeedom might well go with Germany, as described above, and likewise the South would go with the Allies, which would be very bad all around, as Hitler needed to be stopped, and it would have been hard to do without the USA. After the USA got to know Hitler as an ally a little better -- say around 1942 or so, it would probably become obvious that he was doing some things he ought not (6,000,000 dead Jews, for example) and that might put a damper on the relationship. Also, it is hard to picture the USA as an ally of Japan, or to see the CSA caring a whole lot about Japan at all (unless we took Baja California from Mexico to build a transcontinental railway -- a distinct posiblity).

This concept is, therefore, not worth thinking on much. Still... Hiroshimia, Nagasaki Atlanta, Ralleigh... Pearl Harbour Washington D.C.... Dresden Charleston....

CSA all the Way, Stars and Bars Forever:

CSA today, CSA to-morrow, CSA forever...--George Wallace, President, CSA

It is possible that the Confederate States of America would never die. By carving out a large Central or South American empire, by recapturing wishy-washy states like Missouri from the Union, through expansion into Cuba, or simply through proper Southern stubborness, we might live to the present day (imagine a Cold War between North and South). Actually, I don't think there would be a Blue & Grey cold war. If the Confederacy lived long enough to worry about nuclear warfare, I think that we would have resolved our differences with the Yankees and we would be like Canada and the USA today; separate and sovereign nations, but very closely tied. After all, even though they are possible, some I even think likely, scenarios, nothing listed above would necessarily happen if we had won the War. After all, we can but look through a glass, darkly, just as we look back through glass that is somewhat rose-tinted.

But the Confederacy could be a great modern nation, and if it was, the USA might be split enough that Europe would not be muscled out of the world trade and feel so threatened that it feels like it must form this stupid EEC, thus destroying centuries of history and tradition. The CSA could have shuttles in space (after all, two of the USA's three main space facilities are in the Old South -- Houston and Cape Canaveral), have nuclear weapons, be on the UN Security Council, do anyting any other modern nation does. We would really be in good shape for this, after all. For a long time, the USA exported oil (as opposed to our new dependence on the Middle East) and we exported it from the good old Southern state of Texas. The CSA could actually be ahead of the USA, if we had won.

But we didn't. So that's about it.

Actually it isn't. What, you may ask, about the South's Peculiar Institution?

The black man has no rights which the white man is bound to respect...--Roger B. Taney, US Supreme Court

Unfortunately, the South will never recover from the stigma of slavery. Whenever I admit to being pro-Southern, people always say "You mean you support slavery?" I finally heard that question asked to somebody else, and she gave an excellent answer: "It doesn't matter."

Which is true. Ultimately, it doesn't. I won't explain how slavery had its good points (it had several, which are no longer taught in schools much -- due to Yankee brainwashing) because as I was never a slave I cannot truly say that its good points outweigh the bad. That is not the point. The point is, slavery would have died out, more slowly, but in a more healthy way as well.

How could it have ended?

1. Patrick Cleburne, a Confederate General opposed to slavery (there were several) proposed in 1863 that all the slaves who could be be freed and conscripted into the army. Towards the end of the war, a similar plan was approved, but it was too late.

2. To gain recognition from Britain and/or France, slavery might have been done away with the save the nation. That is one way we might have achieved the hypothetical victory upon which all of this is based (because only fear of the anti-slvery masses kept Britain and France from recognising us).

3. Gradual emancipation. Slavery died out in Brazil in 1877 where it was very deeply ingrained. Eventually something would have ended it in the CSA as well.

Furthermore, it was the CS Army that first used Black soldiers, who it paid the same as whites of equal rank (unlike the US Army) and who served in units with white men (unlike the segregated Yankee units). When the US Army came upon runaway slaves, it basically enslaved them and used them to dig trenches.

Also, on the subject of rights for the downtrodden, the CSA was the first to have a red Indian general (Stand Watie) and we did something the USA has never done: put a woman on a bank note. Not a loser like Susan B Anthony, either. It was Lucy Pickens, inventor of iced tea and financer of a large unit of Confederate infantry.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this speculation, and you are welcome to leave comments, suggestions for new Weekly Features, et cetera for jsayers1@utk.edu.

Next week: A NEW WEEKLY FEATURE! (Maybe)