Confederate Excuse Makers

We long ago grew tired of the American Civil War. This was probably because we attained our majority in the 1990's in the aftermath of Ken Burn's epic documentary of same and spent a good chunk of that decade living in Virginia, all be it the northern part.

We hold no truck with Confederate excuse makers. You know the type, the South was right...the Civil War was about state's rights...slavery would have died out anyway...blah, blah blah.

Let's get something straight.  Slavery would have survived into the 20th century.

The South had staked its entire identity on the notion that slavery was necessary and even humane. The South without slavery is like Britain without the monarchy or France without the Germans to surrender to.

As the economics of slavery became more and more untenable Richmond would have done everything it could to prop up the peculiar institution. Let's imagine laws dictating X number of slaves be held for X number of acres of farmland owned; subsidized slave purchases, tax breaks per slave held, etc. etc.

Heck think of the industry that would have been put out of business by slavery. Chain and collar manufactures, slave auctioneers, slave hunters. Heck a whole publishing market existed for books on the care and keeping of slaves. Any emancipation effort would have met with considerable opposition from this sector.

Sorry my Southern partisan friends, but your alternate Confederacy was based on slavery and without the peculiar institution had no reason for being.

Confederate This

So the guys behind HBO's Game of Thrones are developing a new series called Confederate, imagining that the South won the Civil War and slavery exists today.

Where to begin?

This is not in of itself a bad idea. However there is no plausible way that slavery could exist today if the Confederacy existed. In 1860 the American South was already isolated, not just from the north but the rest of the world. Immigrants were reluctant to settle in the south. Of the top ten US cities in 1860, only one, New Orleans, was in the south. The next southern city was Louisville at 12, and then Charleston at 22.  Old southern cities like Richmond and Atlanta were surpassed by new cities like Detroit and Milwaukee.

The economics of this idea wouldn't work either. In 1860 the north outstripped the south in factories, miles of rail, etc. etc, by 10-1 and they had no way to get the capitol to expand. Simply put, even before the war European investors were reluctant to put money into slave states.The Confederates assumed cotton was king, but as soon as the war began the Brits simply got their cotton from Egypt and India and one supposes they were relieved that the war gave them the excuse to end trade with the slave south altogether.

The economics of slavery are awful.

Now imagine if the Confederacy had slavery in say...1950. At some point the rest of the world is going to embargo the Confederacy, as it did with Rhodesia and South Africa, and frankly its not hard to imagine some sort of global expedition to liberate the slaves.

So there's no way your going to have slaves in 2017.

Frankly we're wondering if the GoT guys just want to make a parable and use the show for modern commentary. Look! In this alternate history Trayvon Martin is a Florida slave! Michael Brown works a field in Missouri! Implausible? We're talking about the same industry that just remade Ghost Busters into an all-chick feminist flick.

Hollywood can screw up anything,

We'll be delving further into this Confederate topic as the week drags on.

(Flag pic courtesy of Mr. Christopher Cobb, Monterrey, MA)