AH: turning points 1

[jrittenhouse]

While I’m notorious in AH circles as someone who insists that a AH story be (1) A GOOD STORY and (2) have some historical basis, not to mention (3) be one simple Point Of Divergence, not a whole mess of them (I can deal with some cascade effects, but not simultaneous stuff) - I give a lot of latitude to someone who gets those points clearly covered

Comments

[jrittenhouse]

Don Reynolds was a different piece of things than Bobby Baker per se; there were hearing going on in Congress about Reynolds that were scheduled for November 22d, 1963. Needless to say...

I disagree on the point on the Confederates. Look at the problems that Davis had in getting support for the central war effort and government from the various governors (especially Georgia) because they just didn't care to cooperate. (The fact that Davis was a my-way-or-the-highway ass didn't help.)

The Fugitive Slave Law is a nice point, but such a law was written into the Constitution at the beginning (see Article Four, Section Two, Clause 3) and was reaffirmed specifically in both the 1793 FSL and the far-more-well-known 1850 FSL. (Same section in the Constitution sets up intrastate extradition rules.) The 1850 law was set up because of various court decisions and roadblocks that had made chasing after slaves a lot harder in free states, and was part of the Compromise of 1850 (as such).

The slave states saw this as a necessity to stop the flight of their very expensive property that was being 'stolen' across the border, so to speak. This went across the spectrum as unacceptable.

As to putting black soldiers in the line, this was finally agreed to by the Confederate Congress about a month before the end. By that time, the desertion levels in the CS Army were going through the roof; the end of the war was more a general collapse than much of a battle.

[kalimac]

The argument that the 1850 FSL merely reaffirmed the Constitutional provision is akin to a Scalia argument that he's merely interpreting the Constitution. It's the way you implement it that makes all the difference, and what made the 1850 FSL proto-fascist federal authoritarianism was its proto-fascist federal authoritarian enforcement provisions, unprecedented in the Constitution or in 1793.

And yeah, it was a part of the Compromise of 1850. It was the part that the Southerners demanded in return for giving up their god-given right to have an equal number of slave states and to restrict the expansion of slavery into the territories - a restriction they tolerated for no more than four years.

And sure, the arming of slaves was a last-minute desperation throw. It was what demonstrated that, for such a throw, they'd be willing to discard everything that made them fight in the first place.

You're not telling me anything I didn't already know. You're telling me things I already took into consideration before expressing my previously stated evaluations.

[jrittenhouse]

"You're not telling me anything I didn't already know. You're telling me things I already took into consideration before expressing my previously stated evaluations."

OK. I certainly agree with you as to the level and nastiness of the 1850 FSL; that was what made it so widely hated in the north.

I remember that the terms of the black enlistment law essentially made it masters-option; the master has to sign ove rthe slave to the government and realize that after the war, the slave would be free. (I forget about compensation term...) By the end of the war, I think there were only a few dozen slaves who had been enrolled as the country lay in extremis.

I'm not trying to say that the war was really fought over states' rights. The war was fought over slavery, and the states-rights things were a defense of slavery at all costs. But the pre-war USA 'union' was a looser affair in practice that it is now (or since the Civil War), and many of the southern states found even that too tight for their liking (c.f. the nullification fight under Jackson).

In 1860, the majority of South Carolinians were black and slaves. To keep a large slave population in check, you pretty much are obliged to keep a very strict police state in place - against the slaves. I don't have the information available to me here in the hospital, but my recollection is that voting rights were pretty restricted in regard to property and so on, tilting the political power direction towards wealthy landowners and the like. Not fascism per se, but not many had a real political voice in things.

[kalimac]

After 1832, South Carolina was the only remaining state not to adopt popular vote as the method for choosing presidential electors. Of course the slaves didn't have any votes anyway, but it does go to show how far notions of popular democracy were from their minds.

True enough that the Confederate soldiers fought for their states, but they fought together with men from other states. Lee of Virginia had no objection to working with Longstreet of Alabama.

Since your point is that the Southern states were a little too willfully independent-minded for their own (collective) good, I agree - and that lack of central control is one of the many reasons they lost the war. I do think, however, that it's perfectly reasonable for AH writers to postulate a more authoritarian South - and, indeed, if they're writing a history in which the South wins, they've pretty much got to.

[jrittenhouse]

My point is that you can do the AH two ways - the way that 99.999% of the rest have been doing (fascist, racist unitary state) or 'now that we're over the war, you go your way and I'll go mine'. At least.

I think that first version fulfills a dark fantasy for some, but is way less realistic to what was likely.

[jrittenhouse]

Part 2:

The local pooh-bahs got their way, everyone knew their place, and so on up the food chain. The notion of abolition would throw a serious brick into the antebellum South on social and economic terms, not to mention that the big planters would never be able to keep their systems going if they were paying a free wage. Not to mention what the heck to they do with all of those free blacks ratting around who didn't have a lot of loving thoughts and attitudes to ole Massah.

Anything that struck at The System had to be fought back at at all costs and with all methods, just as a slave revolt would never be tolerated and could never be allowed - it would mean a total devastation of their lives and livelihood. The fact that they really weren't so damn free in their day to day lives and tied to a burdensome, antiquated system was beyond their understanding. It was The System, and they were as obligated to it as a Qing Dynasty Chinese with a pigtail down his back, unable to think of the notion of self-liberation or a lifestyle much different than the one they had been raised in.

Beyond that point - beyond that intrastate obsession of the idea of Leaving Us Be - which worked into the whole states rights thing - the trick was that what was good for Georgia was not necessarily good for Virginia or Texas.

Lee went with the CSA because his first loyalty was to his home state. Others who didn't care much about slavery went with the CSA because their home state had went with the CSA, and they were loyal to their home state.

[jrittenhouse]

Part 3:

What I guess I'm trying to say is that I have no illusions about the states that joined the Confederacy; esepcially when you look at the political and social systems and nastinesses during the war (look at the Confederate Home Guard in particular) it's pretty obvious that there was an had been a really tightly controlled system that kept a lot of people in their 'places', and was pretty ruthless in doing so, and did not brook external influences that might change this.

However, what I'm trying to express is that interstate political connections in the Confederacy were limited as hell. 'Outside' South Carolina or Georgia didn't just mean the USA or Bostron, but that damn Davis in Richmond, or those jokers in Texas or North Carolina. Each little state satrapy was very set on its own self-preservation, and as various governors fought off Davis during the war (Texas, Georgia and North Carolina in particular come to mind, not to mention the Vice President himself, who retired to his Georgia home in a snit and stayed there) when he asked for troops, supplies and other stuff, it becomes clear to me that failing a united front to fight off the USA (which they did only clumsily and shakily at best) on the grounds of losing slavery, that after the war, the likelihood is huge that the alliance of states into a true nation was unlikely to hold up very well. Much more likely would be that key states would break off over some crisis or other and tell the rest of the CSA to go to hell.

Each would be their own little tinpot despotism, quite happy to rusticate in their own sauce in perpetuity, controlling the locals with an iron hand and quite unwilling to let some damn snake from Over There tell them what to do.

[jrittenhouse]

Another angle that I just thought about; the South would continue to bleed slaves after the war, with not a hope in hell of ever getting them back. The USA will tell you to go to hell, for one thing. Heck, they'd send provocateurs down to raise hell.