Minority Rights in a Victorious Confederacy?
- Thread starter Delta Force
- Start date
FWIW, in OTL anti-Mormonism was sometimes quite violent in the post-bellum South:
"Anti-Mormonism was a significant intellectual, legal, religious, and cultural phenomenon, but in the South it was also violent. While southerners were concerned about distinctive Mormon beliefs and political practices, they were most alarmed at the "invasion" of Mormon missionaries in their communities and the prospect of their wives and daughters falling prey to polygamy. Moving to defend their homes and their honor against this threat, southerners turned to legislation, to religion, and, most dramatically, to vigilante violence." http://www.amazon.com/The-Mormon-Menace-Anti-Mormonism-Postbellum/dp/019974002X
Now, granted, you can't automatically read the attitudes of OTL postbellum Southerners into the citizens of a successful Confederacy. But it's not as though they would be a *completely* different people, and so I think such attitudes are relevant.
"Anti-Mormonism was a significant intellectual, legal, religious, and cultural phenomenon, but in the South it was also violent. While southerners were concerned about distinctive Mormon beliefs and political practices, they were most alarmed at the "invasion" of Mormon missionaries in their communities and the prospect of their wives and daughters falling prey to polygamy. Moving to defend their homes and their honor against this threat, southerners turned to legislation, to religion, and, most dramatically, to vigilante violence." http://www.amazon.com/The-Mormon-Menace-Anti-Mormonism-Postbellum/dp/019974002X
Now, granted, you can't automatically read the attitudes of OTL postbellum Southerners into the citizens of a successful Confederacy. But it's not as though they would be a *completely* different people, and so I think such attitudes are relevant.
In OTL, South Carolina elected Benjamin "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman to the US Senate. He advocated for mass-murder of thousands of blacks to keep them under control, and said that they "must remain subordinate or be exterminated". If there was a large enough slave revolt, and someone like Tillman got elected with the pledge to "cleanse the nation", it could get that bad.
again, what rights? the Confederacy wasn't exactly big on rights other than letting their aristocracy own slaves forever.
What's ironic about this, is, amazingly, there seem to have been a not terribly insignificant number of Southerners who themselves became Mormons(btw, a sister of one of my maternal ancestors was one of these early pioneers).
BTW, this may be a tad off-topic, but here's a little something on southern Mormons that I found:
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1977/06/mississippi-mormons?lang=eng
And I can see Tillman, or someone like him, going even farther than that, under certain circumstances; if things get screwed up enough, Jews and Catholics anywhere to the left of Jefferson Davis might be next. And it might not just be ethnic groups he'd go after, but perhaps even political philosophies that the reactionaries amongst the elite might see as a "national security" threat; I can't see *Progressives, or even reformers in general, faring too well in a Tillman regime, TBH.....
Could be a lot better - so long as the minorities were prepared to adopt local norms about slavery.
After all, they put a Jew in their cabinet and gave a general's commission to a Cherokee Indian (and istr a Choctaw as well). Had CA been included in he Confederacy, I can well imagine a Chinese or Japanese being similarly accepted - if he owns slaves.
usertron2020
Donor
Seconded. The natural evolution of a surviving CSA is devolution, not evolution of rights. With the Slavocrats at the top. Followed by poor White Christians that would eventually be subdividing to Southern Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, other Protestant sects, Roman Catholics, Jews, and at the bottom for White Christians, the Abolitionist Quakers. The other colored races were not much represented in the South except Hispanics of Mexican descent, who were economically persecuted (a lot of land stolen from them by Whites).
Natives were in danger of their lives whether in the North or South, especially on the edge of the frontier. As to Free Blacks, in a victorious CSA I imagine most if not all states would adopt the policies some of them had already adopted: Re-enslavement of any ex-slave, or even Free Born Black. The kidnapping of Free Born Northern Blacks by not only raiders but the CSA Army (frex during the Gettysburg Campaign) is pretty proof solid of that.
BTW? Don't believe the myth of the South "evolving" out of Slavery. Expulsion of an excess of MALE slaves following agricultural mechanization and the arrival of the Boll Weevil, yes. But the Slavocrats will give up their Chattel Slavery only over their dead bodies.
DRED SCOTT DECISION PEOPLE! It was more sacred to the Slavocrats than the Bible. No colored man has any rights that the White Man is bound to respect.
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History shows the exact opposite. In 1860, Massachusetts had more immigrants than the whole Confederacy. The mudsill theory was popular and many slaveholders despised Yankees as a mongrel races for having so many foreigners. A victorious Confederacy would become even more convinced of their racial superiority and even less accepting of immigrants.
At least some states of the Confederacy will re-enslave free blacks, since some slaveholding states had tried before the Civil War. Then they'll try to enslave the Indians. Then the Latinos. Then probably the Catholic Irish, some southern leaders had advocated enslaving poor whites before the Civil War.
TFSmith121
Banned
Look up George Fitzhugh...
There were prominent slaveholders in the south who wanted to enslave whites (beyond their own relatives in the quarters, of course)...a CSA that gained independence (how is unmentioned, which is a pretty huge question) would be - along with putting down revolts from various cities, towns, counties, states and petty confederacies that wanted to secede from the secessionists - focused on finding more slaves...
Arkansas had (in 1860, IIRC) passed legislation that required free blacks to leave the state or be enslaved; the initial obvious targets in an independent CSA would be:
a) free blacks (gens du colour et al); and with the one-drop rule, that's all it would take;
b) non-whites (indigenous and partly indigenous people would fall under the one-drop rule, as would many people of partly Spanish ancestry);
c) whites without economic resources...
Basically, all the pathologies of the casta system would drop, to be replaced by the enslaved and those with the economic resources to "not" be enslaved...
Cannibals All! as Fitzhugh said...
Best,
There were prominent slaveholders in the south who wanted to enslave whites (beyond their own relatives in the quarters, of course)...a CSA that gained independence (how is unmentioned, which is a pretty huge question) would be - along with putting down revolts from various cities, towns, counties, states and petty confederacies that wanted to secede from the secessionists - focused on finding more slaves...
Arkansas had (in 1860, IIRC) passed legislation that required free blacks to leave the state or be enslaved; the initial obvious targets in an independent CSA would be:
a) free blacks (gens du colour et al); and with the one-drop rule, that's all it would take;
b) non-whites (indigenous and partly indigenous people would fall under the one-drop rule, as would many people of partly Spanish ancestry);
c) whites without economic resources...
Basically, all the pathologies of the casta system would drop, to be replaced by the enslaved and those with the economic resources to "not" be enslaved...
Cannibals All! as Fitzhugh said...
Best,
The Klan existed in a system where they had power, but not absolute authority. If you put the Klan in charge of a country wracked with class divisions and slave revolts, they would absolutely consider genocide, or at least the killing of large numbers of slaves to 'teach them a lesson'.
They'll keep slavery as an institution alive or die trying. When agricultural mechanization happens and slavery is no longer useful, they'll get rid of the African population. They don't need them around anymore, and they'll be a serious risk for revolt. I think any mass revolt will occur during the mechanization process. Likely, it won't be genocide with gas chambers; just rounding them up, putting them in internment camps, and letting disease, starvation and a periodic mass killing sort them out. Any remnants will be deported or sold to another slave-owning country.
I've never understood why people are so intent on defending the Confederacy; they're among the top of modern history's Rogues' Gallery, up there with Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot.
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It should be noted that the first three Jewish U.S. Senators (including the first practicing Jew) were all from the South. The first two were Judah Benjamin of Louisiana and David Levy Yulee of Florida; both married gentile women, and their children were raised as Christian. The third was Benjamin Jonas, also of Louisiana, who served from 1879 to 1885. All were Democrats. Ironically, Jonas' parents, who lived in Illinois, were Republicans and friends of Abraham Lincoln.
The extreme paranoia of the OTL post-Reconstruction South had one root in the intense desire for white Southerners to regain and maintain absolute control of their region. If that control had never been lost, they might have been more accommodating.
Other roots included anti-Catholic paranoia of of militant Protestants. Perhaps (I cannot say) both antisemitic and anti-Catholic prejudices were aggravated by the flood of Catholic and Jewish immigrants to the U.S. in the later 1800s and early 1900s. This tide of immigration almost entirely avoided the South - in 1910, Iowa had more foreign-born residents in than all 11 ex-Confederate states combined. (I'm recalling from memory - it may be the 10 CSA states except Texas - but then Texas' immgrants were mostly Mexican, not Europeans.)
But the South was part of the same nation as the areas where immigrants thronged, and the general "Anglo" discomfort with mass immgration surely spread across regions. If the CSA had been independent, the immigrant tide would be entirely someone else's concern.
Another root was the urbanization of the U.S. The 1920 Census reported, for the first time, that a majority of Americans lived in cities. The shock of this contributed to the failure of Congress to reappportion the House in that decade - the only such failure, and perhaps to the explosive growth of the Ku Klux Klan at that time.
The South was consciously agrarian, and remained rural while the rest of the country urbanized around it. If the South was politically separated from the urbanized U.S., ISTM that Southerners would feel less threatened and be less reactionary.
TFSmith121
Banned
The southerners were also happy enough to kill
The rebels were also happy enough to kill whites who didn't agree with them, as witness the Nueces Massacre (interesting contrast with the fate of the Showalter Party in California):
http://www.civilwar.org/civil-war-discovery-trail/sites/treue-der-union-monument.html
And, of course, the Colfax Massacre makes it clear how peaceful the south was after Appomattox; what it would be like after a rebel victory can only be imagined.
Best,
The rebels were also happy enough to kill whites who didn't agree with them, as witness the Nueces Massacre (interesting contrast with the fate of the Showalter Party in California):
http://www.civilwar.org/civil-war-discovery-trail/sites/treue-der-union-monument.html
And, of course, the Colfax Massacre makes it clear how peaceful the south was after Appomattox; what it would be like after a rebel victory can only be imagined.
Best,
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That makes no sense whatsoever. The entirety of the civil war was an effort by the Southern aristocracy to repudiate an almost entirely hypothetical threat to their absolute control of their region and their dominance of American politics as a whole. They were prepared to break the union and sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives against imaginary threats. I don't see that sort of personality being accommodating or magnanimous at any step of the way. Basically, they were fire breathing assholes through and through.
Yeah. good luck with that.
Delta Force
Banned
South Carolina is something of a special case, as it had an reactionary extremist streak to it for much of its early history. South Carolina provoked the first and second secession crises, the second of which of course led to the Civil War. It was also the last state to allow direct election of presidential electors, sometime in the 1860s after the Civil War.
So Tillman may have been a reactionary extremist, but unfortunately that was par the course for 1800s South Carolina.
And I can see Tillman, or someone like him, going even farther than that, under certain circumstances; if things get screwed up enough, Jews and Catholics anywhere to the left of Jefferson Davis might be next. And it might not just be ethnic groups he'd go after, but perhaps even political philosophies that the reactionaries amongst the elite might see as a "national security" threat; I can't see *Progressives, or even reformers in general, faring too well in a Tillman regime, TBH.....
The anti-Davis faction might not become as prominent in a victorious Confederacy, although it's somewhat unclear what direction Confederate politics may have gone because it never really expanded beyond proto-parties based around pro and anti-Davis factions.
In some cases being a smaller minority group leads to less discrimination. The United States around the time of the Civil Rights movement might not be the best comparison, but I've heard that racism wasn't really the typical North and South divide that people often think of. Some people have said that they experienced worse racism in the North than in the South, mostly in areas with large minority populations, while it wasn't that bad in smaller towns where they might be only ethnic or religious minority.
Then you consider that the Confederacy is going to be focused on keeping down a large portion of its population that is enslaved or (later on) free but threatening to their continued dominance of the situation, and some of the racism might be relaxed. When you look at the history of colonies and even South Africa, the ruling elite (ironically in the Confederacy, African-Americans might be the majority) tends to expand membership to other groups, even some members of the majority group that is being oppressed. It might go from the WASP elite to the elite in general, then WASPs in general, and then perhaps out to ethnic and religious minorities in general.
I don't see too much reenslavement or enslavement occurring, because that could kick off something akin to the South African embargoes decades earlier. Enslavement of Catholics and white people certainly won't win the Confederacy favor among the European or Union public.
My experience of human nature is that people and cultures who are utter shits following a defeat, will tend to be horrorshows when they get their hands on victory.
Essentially, an asshole is an asshole, a dysfunctional culture remains dysfunctional. The Confederate South was a society so psychopathically wedded, both ideologically, commercially and politically to racial superiority and oppression that they started a war over it. Having lost that war, they simply re-instituted oppression in any way they could. I don't think that winning would make them better people. It would just make them more confident and unrestrained in their brutality.
Essentially, an asshole is an asshole, a dysfunctional culture remains dysfunctional. The Confederate South was a society so psychopathically wedded, both ideologically, commercially and politically to racial superiority and oppression that they started a war over it. Having lost that war, they simply re-instituted oppression in any way they could. I don't think that winning would make them better people. It would just make them more confident and unrestrained in their brutality.
TFSmith121
Banned
The Army of Northern Virginia under Lee was happy to
The Army of Northern Virginia under Lee was happy to enslave anyone they came across in the Maryland or Pennsylvania campaigns who met their requirements, however.
See:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Ma-XQ2KqkyIC&pg=PA137&output=html&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4
I see no reason to expect a victorious CSA would be any different; both McLaws and Longstreet are on the record confirming enslavement as ANV policy.
Best,
The Army of Northern Virginia under Lee was happy to enslave anyone they came across in the Maryland or Pennsylvania campaigns who met their requirements, however.
See:
http://books.google.com/books?id=Ma-XQ2KqkyIC&pg=PA137&output=html&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4
I see no reason to expect a victorious CSA would be any different; both McLaws and Longstreet are on the record confirming enslavement as ANV policy.
Best,
I'm not so sure about enslaving Latinos or Catholic Irishmen.....but legalizing peonage for them might not be so far-fetched, especially in the more reactionary states, like S.C. and Mississippi.....
Maybe, but wouldn't some of these whites, at least, themselves rebel against such a prospect?
Unfortunately, that may not indeed be so farfetched.
Can't argue with that, sadly.
Interesting, I suppose. Though I bet raising their kids as Christians probably really helped in the long run, TBH, speaking of the former two.
Maybe, but I'm not so convinced of the latter, though. Even before the Civil War, the South had it's own nativist streak, including that of those who supported the Fire-Eaters.
And I'm sure there were a fair number of other, lesser-known incidents, as well.
Sad but true.
There is some truth to that, but I've noticed that, in a good number of cases, it's actually the opposite on both sides of the Mason Dixon line. (i.e., more diversity = less racism. Which makes sense in at least some situations).
That may perhaps happen, if the Confederacy loosens up a bit in the long run. But it's a pretty big IF, though, TBH.
Which is part of the reason I suggested peonage as an alternative.
Sadly, you do have a good point.
TFSmith121
Banned
Good post....the issue with the "one drop" rule is that
The issue with the "one drop" rule is that one could end up with an endless series of "Puddnhead Wilson" type incidents across the South, and the realities of a litigious honor culture based on mastery would be, um, noisy...
I could see whites denouncing each other as "colored" right left and sideways to settle any number of old scores, with all the impact on civil society one would expect.
Make the Hatfields and McCoys look downright peaceable...
Best,
The issue with the "one drop" rule is that one could end up with an endless series of "Puddnhead Wilson" type incidents across the South, and the realities of a litigious honor culture based on mastery would be, um, noisy...
I could see whites denouncing each other as "colored" right left and sideways to settle any number of old scores, with all the impact on civil society one would expect.
Make the Hatfields and McCoys look downright peaceable...
Best,