[lbo-talk] Civil War - was Catalonia the latest flashpoint in theEuro crisis

[Wythe Holt jr.]

So what would a violent Confederacy, eager for war have done if it had been
allowed to withdraw peacefully? Would it have settled into stagnation that
would have doomed the slavery it withdrew from the Union to protect? It
would started a war of conquest. It would chosen one of the only two
possible targets. Knowing of the Unions great industrial base and larger
population, it might have found an excuse to attack the Union, hoping to
conquer it before it could mobilize. Or it might have attacked Mexico,
hoping to gain a base rich in population to enslave and natural resources
to steal, and become a great enough power to eventually attack the Union. I
don't know which of these it would have chosen, but I doubt either choice
would have led to a less bloody war than the actual civil war. And I doubt
either one would have led to a US labor party.  Either immediately there
would have been war between the Union and the Confederacy. Quite likely a
bloodier war. And almost certain a war in which the US ended up as single

 nation incorporating the Secessionist states.

WH: I think it is fairly clear that the Confederacy would have attacked both
Cuba (and other large islands) and Mexico, and annexed what they could.  

Southerners were trained in martial arts and the culture told them that gentlemen 
(and even yeomen) had no work to do BUT to supervise the chattels and to fight wars.  
The continuance of their culture depended upon warfare.  Further, with the growing 
world-wide tendency to terminate slavery in many places, they would have had to be 
good diplomats to convince other nations to keep or adopt the slave mode of 
production, which would probably have led to endless wars.  

The market nations for their cotton production, and whatever crops would succeed 
cotton, would be prosyletized to maintain themselves as allies -- with probably 
internal conflicts from anti-slavery forces inside them making things very interesting.  

Would there have been a reversal of the worldwide trend to terminate slavery as a 
human work status?  Would there be a competition for allies in Europe and Asia with 
the "free" states of the north?  Would the contrast between slavery and "freedom" 
(that is, wage labor) have become sharper, leading to greater union power in the 
Northern US and perhaps other cotton markets, which might have retained a socialist
outlook?  Would the triumph of the southern planters eventually have meant a much
more socialist world of commerce and trade in the North Atlantic?

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