What if.....? Part 3 The South
I have heard many fellow southerners over the years say something to the effect that “if the south had won, slavery would have eventually died out on its own.” I absolutely disagree with that – it would have actually become worse for the black man than it was before. Slave life on large plantations has been well documented in its brutality. The majority of slaves in the south, however, lived a somewhat better existence than those on the large plantations but they were still slaves and obviously totally subject to their owners' whims. In a post war south, these conditions would undoubtedly worsened for a variety of reasons.
The southern infrastructure was nearly in ruins, displaced people both white and black littered the country, courthouses and records were gone, and malnutrition and disease were rampant. It is unlikely that the CSA government would have made a serious effort to return slaves to their owners, at least not initially. It is more likely that the government would have formed labor brigades out of the slaves that were not currently in their owners' control, and would have used them of WPA style projects to repair the country. One must not forget that due to the state of the infrastructure that it was impossible to transport supplies and food in any significant amount so the life expectancy in these labor brigades would have been very short.
The Confederacy would have had staked itself nearly to ruin on the institution of slavery and would have viewed their “victory” as a validation of the practice and so would have energetically worked to reassert control over the black population. I imagine the black population would have a variety of reactions to this; despair, anger, and a sense of betrayal so the reassertion of control would certainly have been bloody.
Over the ensuing years the south would feel mounting international pressure to eliminate slavery but would resist it strongly. Their national pride, as well as the entrenched social hierarchy, would demand it. I suppose it is possible that the invention of the internal combustion engine many years later would have reduced the south's “need” to rely on forced labor, but the institution would have lived on for a long time, if for no other reason than for the nature the nation's birth.
One final part is coming.
