CSA: Confederate States of America/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • So, so many things wrong. The South never could have conquered the North, it didn't have the manpower. The South never sought to conquer the North, its war aim was to secure its independence. Reuniting with the North would had the same problems for the South that they seceded to get away from: ie, being outvoted in the Senate, House, and Presidential elections. The battle flag is used as a national flag. Dixie is called the national anthem. Britain and France do nothing while an aggressive expansionist slave power conquers half the world. And "slavery defines us as a people"; while there were some who did go to war solely because of slavery, for the most part it was about Lincoln's Northern industrial backers building their industries with money from the South; before the income tax most federal income came from port tariffs, mainly from the South. Lincoln made the Emancipation Declaration deep into the war, redefining the conflict, while before that he had said that "if I can preserve the Union without freeing a single slave, I will do it." This mockumentary plays into a common misconception about slavery being the point of the war, while documents from the time show that for both sides it was clearly about money and power (Lincoln wanting to keep power over the South and the money from its port tariffs).
    • Slavery was a major part of the war. Not the first and last of it, but still a major part. Lincoln was personally opposed to slavery but (as the above troper alludes to) he figured it was more "realistic" for the Union to win and then let slavery die what he saw as an inevitable slow death. It was only after many conversations with Frederick Douglass that he decided more drastic action needed to be taken.
    • And how. The idea of slavery surviving in a semi-modern nation (And if the CSA is able to put men on the moon and win world wars, it must be pretty modernized) is pretty ridiculous. Slaves were expensive, and the mass production of modern farm equipment would have rendered slavery obsolete (A tractor is not only cheaper, but doesn't try to run away). Also, remember that no society stays static. Great Britain was once one of history's most enthusiastic peddlers of dope and slaves, yet it's unimaginable that today's Brits would approve of such things. Oh, I should post-script this by mentioning that this troper is a full-blooded Yankee.
    • Also, wouldn't the invention of labor-saving devices obviate the need for slaves at some point? Oh, right, Southerners just like slavery.
      • The problem is that the CSA Constitution made it unconstitional even for the states to de-facto abolish slavery. It simply was illegal for a Confederate state to ban slavery in fact.
      • Ancient Greece and Rome both had rampant slavery and still developed loads of advanced machinery. Then they had slaves operate them.
      • No. Rome and Greece did not develop loads of advanced machinery. They didn't even invent the steam engine. By contrast, America did invent better and better technology, which is why slavery was already on its way to being fazed out in the northern Southern states by the time of the war.
        • The steam engine was indeed invented in ancient Europe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_of_Alexandria#Inventions_and_achievements
          • And it was never used to power anything more than a few trinkets. The Greeks and Romans never industrialized. That's the point.
            • Because they had slaves! That's the point!
            • The Greeks and Romans also didn't have metallurgy advanced enough to support making true steam engines or machine tools. Even if they'd wanted to implement steam engines widescale, they couldn't build most of the things one would want to use a steam engine for.
            • It also depends on what you mean by "industrialization," which does not have to be seen as mutually exclusive with "agriculture." Large-scale plantation economies (such as existed in the American South and Caribbean) could be considered a form of industry. Meanwhile, the machinery that (arguably) might have eventually phased out slavery -- such as the cotton gin and sugar cane boilers -- were originally operated by slaves. As for the "expense" of owning slaves, yes it was fantastically expensive but "common knowledge (true or no)" dictated that not having to pay them balanced everything out. Plus, by the time of the Civil War most people were (pardon the crass terminology) "breeding" rather than "buying" slaves which (a) offset many of the purchasing costs and (b) got around the British abolition of the triangle trade. Finally, having had slavery as an integral part of their economy for so long the "peculiar institution" (as well as its attendant white supremacy) did eventually become a part of the identity of the Confederacy. Hell -- slavery had existed over here in some form since Massachusetts Bay was settled. It just ended up being abolished there way early because New England soil is way to rocky to support large-scale agriculture (with the exception of Rhode Island; they held out until the early 1800s).
              • My guess would be that America uses slaves for menial labor like cleaning homes or tending to crops. Things that don't have mainstream technology to make slaves redundant.
    • Just to list a few reasons why the CSA would have never won the war: Aforementioned lack of population, few factories capable of war production, no direct international supporters after Lincoln proclaimed that the war was about slavery and not taxes, the Northern blockade keeping the South from importing supplies, other than what tiny amount blockade runners could bring in, a lack of necessary war supplies, such as shoes and food, and despite that Lee successfully stopped the Northern invasion in the east, the Confederacy was being defeated in the west.
      • The movie makes it pretty clear they got support from other countries that helped them win the war. That's why it's called Alternate History, things are different than in Real Life.
        • Doesn't matter. Unless those countries shipped their entire armed forces and more over to fight for the CSA, there's no way they would have managed to annex the USA. To secure a recognition of independence, sure, and that was the Confederate war aim from the start (And if the movie had just taken that angle, I would have 10% of the problems with it that I do, that's the biggest IJBM for me by a hell of a long way), but if they started winning, and then started making noises about actually taking over the Union, their allies would have probably abandoned them for derangement anyway, and they quite simply couldn't have succeeded even with help.
        • The northern blockade was notoriously porous at least at the start of the war; the British Navy was more than capable of breaking the U.S. Navy at sea (even given that the Union did have the help of the Russian Black Sea Fleet).[1] Further, resentment over the draft and the damage to trade created significant tension in the North. A Confederate victory might prompt some Northern states to break away as well (the New England states had threatened to do so twice before). Assuming a Confederate victory on the battlefield (very unlikely, considering their disadvantages) the 'conquest' of the rest of the Union might be more along the lines of the CSA taking over other breakaway states over a long period of time rather than an outright military victory.
    • Take Howard Zinn as you will, but he insisted that the Confederates would've eventually freed the slaves had they won. Like all Western Powers did; it was already beginning to disappear in the most industrialized Southern states.
    • And what, other than a racial caste system, would a mostly agricultural, anti-federalist, fundamentalist Christian society like the CSA have in common with a mostly industrial, hyper-statist, neo-pagan society like Nazi Germany?
      • The paranoia of the constantly threatened sovereignty of a nation-state with an inferior economic and industrial base... like Germany after WWI.
        • Except the Confederacy would have likely been supported by Britain and France as a counterbalance to the Union, the main reason either considered supporting it in the first place.
      • Hold up here; whatever Hitler's personal occult views were, Nazi Germany was hardly "neo-pagan" as a society. Many of their social values were based on a fundamentalist Christian, socially-conservative way of looking at the world (such as encouraging women to stay home and rewarding those who had the most babies), and while there were notable Christian religious leaders who fought the Nazis (like Boenhoffer and Niemoller) there were many more who supported the regime. Also, the Nazi regime was explicitly anti-communist in its ideology - that was a large part of why they eventually invaded the USSR - so, in fact, they would have had that in common with the CSA.
  • Slavery was abolished everywhere else in the Western world; even South Africa abandoned apartheid. But a 21st century Confederacy is going to be buying slaves on eBay?
    • gBay?
    • One point in response: the dissolution of Apartheid happened relatively recently (1980s) and didn't seem inevitable until after the fact (like most events, of course). In general, we have to be very careful about "presentism", the idea that whatever's happened "by now" (2011 as I'm writing this) has some quality of inevitability, a quality which things yet to happen in the future (2012 and beyond) don't. Consider the wide range of dates during which various countries granted women the right to vote — Sweden in 1718 (though very limited), New Zealand in 1893 (first full suffrage), USA in 1920, France in 1944, and of course many countries still don't have women's suffrage today. From an American's perspective, 1944 is ridiculously "late" and 1718 happily "early" for this event to occur, but they both did; there's no fundamental law of the universe dictating the "normal" time for women's suffrage — or the abolition of slavery. [2] For my money, a much bigger surprise is the In Spite of a Nail consistency of something called "eBay" remaining, along with all the other coincidental similarities I understand this movie (never seen it) has, such as JFK becoming president. Heck, the odds are arguably very low that the "same person" could ever be born in a different timeline simply because a different sperm is much more likely to fertilize the egg the "second time around", but that's another story.
        • Agreed the African country of Mauritania didn't ban slavery until 1981 and it still is unenforced!! There is no reason that the same couldn't be true of the CSA.
    • TLDR of above: In the sentence "slavery was abolished", the word "was" is decivingly simple; what it means is "before 2009" (or whenever that was written). Prior to 1850, for example, that sentence would be false. Slavery doesn't have inherent "was-ness".
  • Why do they only have three talking heads during the whole movie?
    • A low budget?
  • If John Ambrose Fauntroy I was Fauntroy V's great-grandfather, and Fauntroy III his father, who and where is John Ambrose Fauntroy IV?
    • Maybe an older brother that died when he was young, but before J.A.F.V was born? It would make some sense for Fauntroy III to name his second kid after the first if the latter died...
      • Less likely, but still plausible: a living older cousin or a deceased uncle.
  • How would they deal with black tourists or visitors or diplomats? Grant them diplomatic immunity? Tell them to get lost or get enslaved? Like, say, the Confederacy hosts a Formula One grand prix (And trust me, if they offered enough money, Bernie Ecclestone would form a Confederate Grand Prix). How would they treat the biracial (looks black) Lewis Hamilton?
    • Presumably no major power with large numbers of black diplomats would be so careless as to assign them to postings in the CSA. Even with diplomatic immunity gaining the cooperation of white CSA government officials would be next to impossible. Any predominantly black nation would probably form a protecting power agreement with a white nation to represent its interests in the CSA. As for black celebrities (for that matter, black people in general) they probably avoid the place the same way Jews weren't lining up to explore all the wonderful tourism opportunities within Nazi Germany. It looks like Canada is the place to go in this setting in any case.
    • I think it is mentioned in the movie that the CSA are treated much like South Africa during the late days of apartheid, being mostly shut out of international cooporation and boycotted against.
  • And what about Confederate embassies abroad? Would they bring slaves to work on those or deem it too risky, considering that slaves could just escape and hide in the country?
    • The old South was at its heart an aristocratic society. Lots of second, third, and fourth sons who didn't inherit the plantation to recruit for civil service posts (and lots of non-aristocratic whites to clean the silver and carry out the trash; sell it as a way up in society and in this setting there'd be a line out the door).
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  1. ↑ Russia was the only major European power to provide material assistance to the USA during the Civil War. The Black Sea Fleet, expelled from its home base after the Crimean War, operated out of New York and Boston and helped enforce the blockade. A determined British effort to break the blockade would probably force Russia to withdraw its assistance.
  2. ↑ Note that this is distinct from arguments about whether slavery would be practically teneble as industry became more and more sophisticated; that sort of thing has a much stronger effect on social change than the number on the calendar.
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