Reply #28: I would say yes [View All]

[Yupster]

The south should have been left to peacefully secede.

Other than the mafia, you should be able to leave any group you join, preferably by the same means.

In this case, the states joined the Constitutional Republic with a vote of their state legislatures and left the same way.

So, let's put our soothsayer hats on and guess what the world would be like today.

First thing is it would be more advanced because there's no telling what great inventions, discoveries and pieces of art, literature and music were lost because 600,000 of our best educated people were killed in the war.

I think it is very likely that the two countries would have later reconnected.

Whether they did or didn't though, I don't think the world would be very diferent. Instead of having two friendly english-speaking democracies on North America, you'd have three.

If the Confederacy did remain independant, it would be far less powerful than the USA. It would be a regional power aimed at the Caribbean, maybe with the power of France, Italy or the Ukraine. New Orleans would be a world class trading city, the most important of the Gulf and Caribbean. Cuba would likely be a Confederate state.

Slavery would have been gradually ended about the time Brazil ended theirs -- maybe based on the Jamaican model, and maybe sped up by northern money.

Harry Turtledove would be writing what if books based on how the world would be if there had been a Civil War, and they'd be as implausable as his current ones are.

That's my guesses anyway.