Subject: Re: A New CSA 'Victory"
From: Conrad Hodson <conradh@efn.org>
Date: 1997/12/05
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.95.971205053446.26371E-100000@garcia.efn.org>
Newsgroups: soc.history.what-if
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On 4 Dec 1997, Jim Rittenhouse wrote:
> >
> >I picture this much like the migration of slaves into texas from the 1850s on.
> >Remember that the frontier held a strong attraction. I would admit that little
> >agricultural land remained to be settled in the South East, but Mississippi,
> >Arkansas and Texas still had land available.
>
> Well, there's land and land - and suitable land - and who's paying for all
> this land?
>
A lot of it was never paid for at all. The early settlers in an area
often filtered quietly in to land the local Indians weren't using; but
whether the natives resisted early or late in the settlement process the
results were almost total defeat and displacement by whites, or whites
plus black slaves on the Southern parts of the frontier.
While each side in the slavery/abolition debates tried to out-grow its
opponent in the struggle for control of new territories, it was widely
recognized at the time that the familiar crops of north and south grew in
different sorts of climate. So Yankee imperialists grabbed the Oregon
country, and kept eyeing Canada, and Seward even bought Alaska on OTL.
Southern imperialists settled and aided Texas, first supporting its
independence and later its annexation to the prewar US. They also openly
advocated further conquests in the Caribbean, Central America and the
remainder of Mexico; William Walker's conquest of Nicaragua had mostly
Southern personnel and support. No state north of the Isthmus was really
fit to fend off Confederate aggression; barring some kind of "Monroe
Doctrine" by European powers the Confederacy might well have expanded
there when it ran out of good land in Texas.
>
> This is a big leap. Most big plantations were way away from cities. Slave
> labor at industrial work is not particularly useful, IMHO, except in the
> coal-scuttle department. Not motivated or trained, can't read instructions,
> etc.
>
Actually, in the mid-19th Century, a lot of industry was not particularly
urban. A newly independent Confederacy would have had two obvious
industries to expand: iron and textiles. Both had been developed before
the war, and neither one was noted (in the South, at least) for seeking
urban locations. Ironmaking in particular sprang up in rural areas,
largely employing farmers in their off-season. (See _Foxfire 5_ for some
fascinating looks at rural Southern ironmaking)
Cotton and hemp milling, like ironmaking, involved bulky products; there
were logistical as well as value-added arguments for spinning and weaving
close to the areas where the staple was grown. At the time of the Civil
War, the vast majority of textile mills, north or south, were
water-powered; steam did not take over until quite late in the century.
Water power sites were also quite dispersed and often rural.
Given these, and also the fact that Southern enterprises often demanded
the importation of the most skilled workers anyway, cities were not really
prerequisites for industrial growth. On OTL, in fact, local histories are
full of mills built in the woods, with towns then springing up around
them. The CSA's third obvious industrial growth area, petroleum, is also
based on a dispersed resource; by the late 1850's enough wealth was
flowing from wells in Pennsylvania, Rumania and Poland that the South
could get the idea.
Most southern slaves were not technicians, of course, but neither were the
European peasant immigrants who ran the northern factories of the era, or
the Chinese peasant immigrants who built the California railroads.
Nonetheless, the industries and the railroads _were_ built. Much of such
building was done with pick and shovel and axe and sledge, while most
factory jobs were deliberately simplified to exploit the immigrants who
couldn't speak English, let alone read and write it. The difference
between a black plow jockey from Alabama and a white plow jockey from
Ireland were not that great; particularly since the factory or mine was an
alien environment for either of them.
Conrad Hodson
