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]

"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.