Conderate states never rejoin US

[memphis]

As I noted, Lincoln himself made it very clear he had no intention to interfere with slavery in the South, and even endorsed a constitutional amendment that would prohibit any future amendment giving the Congress the power to interfere with the domestic institutions of any state (which passed Congress).

The trouble is nobody in the South believed him. After the House Divided speech, people the South were convinced that Lincoln was an abolitionist.

[memphis]

No, the South would have obviously been on the cutting edge of Civil Rights.

[memphis]

I'm working on a timeline where the south wins the ACW due to the border states all opting to secede too and no fort sumter(gives the south more time to prepare). The US eventualyl retakes some of the border states but in 2005 the confederacy is still around. Its a militaristic apartheid slave state superpower by now. The US is a technocratic nation and the world economic/space superpower.

This is highly unlikely.  First, it is based on the assumption that the South, pre-Civil War, was fundamentally racist.  This is not the case.  The anti-bellum South was prodominantly paternalistic (and still is to some extent, even today).  The slave owners who treated their slaves well (which made up the vast majority, BTW) didn't think it terms of White or Black so much as the Father-Family ralationship which existed between Wealthy Southern Gentalmen and, well, pretty much everyone else.  Wealthy Southern men saw it more as their duty to community and God to "take care" of people who were, for whatever reason, of lower circumstances than themselves, including poor whites.

In fact, institutionalized racism was acctually more popular in the North, as Northern "intellectuals" were deeply involved in the formation of the various race theories, which sought to prove that North Western Europeans (except the Irish) were supirior to all other men, because of evolution.

Without the social collapse that came after the war, it is doubtful that racism would have been such a huge issue in the South as it was in the RTL, and blacks probably would have eventually been emancipated anyway.  Acctually, what is more possible than the senerio that you proposed is some sort of communist revolution which united poor white and blacks against the wealthy elite.

You're really romanticizing issues of race in the Old South. Above all, whites in the South were scared to death of a slave rebellion a la Haiti, and they crafted cruel slave codes that required slave owners to keep blacks "in their place." At the same time, suggestions that the Confederacy would still have slavery in 2005, more than 100 years after it was abolished everywhere else seem dubious.

[memphis]

I'm working on a timeline where the south wins the ACW due to the border states all opting to secede too and no fort sumter(gives the south more time to prepare). The US eventualyl retakes some of the border states but in 2005 the confederacy is still around. Its a militaristic apartheid slave state superpower by now. The US is a technocratic nation and the world economic/space superpower.

This is highly unlikely.  First, it is based on the assumption that the South, pre-Civil War, was fundamentally racist.  This is not the case.  The anti-bellum South was prodominantly paternalistic (and still is to some extent, even today).  The slave owners who treated their slaves well (which made up the vast majority, BTW) didn't think it terms of White or Black so much as the Father-Family ralationship which existed between Wealthy Southern Gentalmen and, well, pretty much everyone else.  Wealthy Southern men saw it more as their duty to community and God to "take care" of people who were, for whatever reason, of lower circumstances than themselves, including poor whites.

In fact, institutionalized racism was acctually more popular in the North, as Northern "intellectuals" were deeply involved in the formation of the various race theories, which sought to prove that North Western Europeans (except the Irish) were supirior to all other men, because of evolution.

Without the social collapse that came after the war, it is doubtful that racism would have been such a huge issue in the South as it was in the RTL, and blacks probably would have eventually been emancipated anyway.  Acctually, what is more possible than the senerio that you proposed is some sort of communist revolution which united poor white and blacks against the wealthy elite.

You're really romanticizing issues of race in the Old South. Above all, whites in the South were scared to death of a slave rebellion a la Haiti, and they crafted cruel slave codes that required slave owners to keep blacks "in their place." At the same time, suggestions that the Confederacy would still have slavery in 2005, more than 100 years after it was abolished everywhere else seem dubious.

You are correct about slave codes but he is absolutely correct on the development of racism and the treatment of slaves in the south.

I have no doubt that slaveowners thought they were "taking care" of blacks by "keeping them in their place" and not allowing them to learn to take care of themselves. All of this was based on a racist idealogy that said that blacks were inherently incapable and a threat to whites as well as themselves.  Racism did acquire a more scientific legitimacy in Northern circles, only because people in the North were more interested in approaching the issue from a scientific perspective. Evidence of pre-bellum Southern racism: It was a felony to teach free blacks to read in most Southern states. Every Southern state forbade free blacks from entering and in 1859, Arkansas ordered all free blacks to leave. In Query XIV of his Notes on Virginia, Thomas Jefferson says of blacks, "in reason much inferior" and "in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous." I'm sure that not every slaveowner was vindictively cruel, but Southern society was fully based upon institutionalized white supremacy. It'm amazing what a lust for large profits will do to people.

[memphis]

My source is The Enduring Vision, my old high school history textbook. Pretty mainstream stuff. Southern states did tolerate free blacks, who had been emancipated during the Manumission craze after the Revolution, but they banned free blacks from other states from resettling in their states.  They didn't want anymore aberrations suggesting that blacks could be anything else but slaves. It was also generally assumed that they would help slaves in an uprising. For this reason, Memphis imposed a curfew on free blacks.
There is a major problem with the WPA slave narratives. Old freedman, who had been oppressed by white people their entire lives, were being asked by white people (sent by the federal government) what slavery was like. Do you really think they were going to say it was awful? Black people were, rightfully, scared out of their minds to complain about their lot to white people in the 1930s. They'd most likely end up hanging from a tree.

[memphis]

What was happening was that prices for slaves were much higher in the Deep South, so lots of people were selling their slaves South and thereby reducing the population of slaves in states like Maryland and Virginia.

[memphis]

virginia didn't come close to banning slavery in the 1850's IIRC. It DID come within a few votes of compenstated emancipation in the 1830's... but that was before sectional tensions ratched it up.

This was immediately after the Nat Turner rebellion. With the threat of a widespread slave rebellion, some people thought having a slave society might not be such a good idea after all. Virginia also included what is now West Virginia, a mountainous region that was often hostile to slavery and its interests.

[memphis]

West Virginia seceded because they were pro-Union. You could say that's underrepresentation.