If the North & South had peacefully separated without civil war, which nation would have become a superpower?

Question

The manly, gallant South, or the pusillanimous, effeminate Yankee rump state?

Answer 1

I am going out on a limb and answer this question with a question. I believe it answers your question anyway. All one need to is mentality fill in the blanks. War?

Was There a Better Way to End Slavery Than Civil War?
Slavery was one of the most vile institutions ever to mar the soul of the American republic. This assumes three things:
* It was right to end slavery
* The resources used to fight the Civil War could have been used in other ways
* It is desirable to use resources as efficiently as possible
Evaluating the Costs of the Civil War
Total cost (North and South) of the Civil War (in current dollars from the era) $5,200,000,000.00
Total number of slaves living in the South at the start of the Civil War 3,500,000
Average cost of war per slave $5,200,000,000 / 3,500,000
$1,485.71
Average market price per slave in 1860 (current dollars from the era) $1,658.00
Total estimated cost to have bought out all living slaves at market price $1,658.00 x 3,500,000= $5,803,000,000
Approximate premium cost of buyout in excess of direct costs of war $603,000,000
Total combatant deaths due to war 558,052
Value of combatant lives lost if priced at the market value of a slave: 558,052 x $1,658.00=$925,250,000
The Premium Paid for War. If slaves were selling for more than $1,600 each, then it would be consistent with the principle that "all men are created equal" to value the life of a free soldier at the same amount. A very conservative estimate of the value of lives lost in combat, then, would be the market value of a slave times the number of soldiers' lives lost, or more than $900,000,000. The difference between the actual cost of the war ($5,200,000,000) and the hypothetical buyout option ($5,803,000,000) would have been only $603,000,000, or three hundred million dollars less than the very conservative estimate of the value of lives lost in combat.

Prevailing wages for labor in the South at the time were around 50 cents per day, or perhaps $150 for a 300-day working year (slaves could certainly be assumed to have worked six days a week). Even assuming that the slaves delivered a 10% to even 20% annual return on the slaveowner's investment, a buyout option, even for a premium price, would have been a vastly less costly method of resolving the dispute over slavery than outright war. The value used as the "cost of war" is strictly the direct out-of-pocket expenses incurred by both sides.

Naturally, there may be some objection to the concept of ending slavery by buying it out, since that would seem to legitimize the evil of slavery by acknowledging it with one final exchange. However, the practice of buying a slave's freedom had already been established by the time of the Civil War (Frederick Douglass, for instance, had bought his own freedom two decades before), so this exercise only seeks to illustrate whether there was a more economical alternative to combat.

It may also be reasonably pointed out that the average price paid for a slave could have been expected to rise during the course of a progressive buyout, since demand would have remained relatively high and supply would have declined. What is presented here is only a rudimentary analysis, and it assumes a rather liberal application of eminent domain under the Takings Clause of the Constitution (within the Fifth Amendment): "[N]or shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." This analysis assumes that the government had the legal authority to set a value moderately above the market price for which it could have asserted eminent domain in order to free the slaves. While certainly an imperfect solution, it brings the mathematics of the situation within our grasp.

Costs Not Accounted For. While war offers very little in terms of indirect benefit, it incurs significant indirect costs. Among those costs not accounted for in the above:
* Disruption to the economy caused by taking 3.8 million men out of the labor force
* Widespread property destruction, as by Sherman's March to the Sea.
* Lingering problems of racial hatred that persist nearly 150 years after the war began. Many of these can be traced to the social turmoil that resulted from the sudden emancipation of the slaves, which disrupted the established social and economic orders in the South.
* The vast social costs of war
Considering the nearly one million combat casualties during the war, a more economical solution to the problem of slavery would have been a progressive buyout of slaveowners with a simultaneous prohibition on the purchase of new slaves.

Conclusion: Thinking Strategically Beyond Direct Action
Questions of this nature persist today:
* A slave trade remains alive today in the Ivory Coast and other parts of western Africa. Worthwhile analysis might ask what economic incentives could be used to end this barbaric set of conditions.
* The "occupied" or "disputed" territories in Israel and the Palestinian region persists as a source of broad conflict and violence. Worthwhile economic analysis of the dispute could ask whether a Palestinian state could be bought, rather than fought over, or whether adequate incentives can be put in place to disrupt the causes of violence. Money is flowing to the Palestinian territories already, so the question is what behaviors the incentives are encouraging. Would, for example, investments by Israel and its allies in private industrial development (and, thus, job and private-wealth creation) be more efficient than investments in military protection?
* Rather than restricting investment in and exchange with Cuba, would the US better serve its interests and the interests of Cubans in removing Fidel Castro from power by instead turning to free trade with Cuba in order to destabilize the Communist regime?

A reasonable conclusion to draw is that rational policymakers should consider economic solutions to their goals and evaluate them against reasonable estimates of the costs of military or other strategic action, since the same objectives may be achieved through economic action as through other methods, at much lower cost.

This being purely a speculative alternative history, little attention is granted to the many other factors that would surely have complicated what is presented here as a tidy arithmetic analysis. Would even a compensated emancipation had to have been enforced at gunpoint? Could either the North or South have reasonably estimated the costs of war? Was the Civil War really about Constitutional principles, with the emancipation just a pleasant byproduct? The bottom line is that like all economic models, this is a gross simplification intended to teach something valuable about human behavior. In this case, though it's much too late to apply the economic lesson to the Civil War, it is extremely worthwhile to keep economic alternatives in mind for future instances of human conflict.

Abraham Lincoln actually perceived the possibility of a slave buyout by the North to the tune of $400 million at the Hampton Roads conference in 1865. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, a participant in the talks, quoted Lincoln as saying, "Slavery is doomed. It cannot last long in any event, and the best course, it seems to me, for your public men to pursue, would be to adopt such a policy as will avoid, as far as possible, the evils of immediate emancipation." Secretary of State William Seward balked at the proposal and suggested that the Union had no obligation to the Confederacy, but Lincoln viewed slavery as the joint failure of both North and South. Lincoln also apparently perceived that compensation would ease Southern hostility. Unfortunately, this course was never followed. The South would have ended up the Superpower and we sure as hell would have been better off!


God Bless You and The SOUTH.

Answer 2

Somehow the "manly, gallant South" could not provide its "gallant" men with enough food, shoes, or uniforms and were defeated militarily by the North. The North already became a superpower by 1865. These facts in themselves speak volumes.

More wishful thinking on the part of another believer of the Lost Cause...

Answer 3

Great question! I would have to say the South, because they would have had:
1. better foreign relations, especially with France and England
2. better leaders, because most of the US presidents up until this time had come from the South
3. more money, because they had cotton, and since slavery was on its way out, they would have ready cash to invest
4. better military, because they had better and more visionary military leaders, not to mention more of them
However, the North had one big advantage. It was already industrialized, which the South still had to do. The North also had the bigger and better navy, though with some smart talking the South could neutralize that with the British navy. The North also had a faster-growing economy, which was more diversified than the South's. But there ultimately was nothing the North had the South could not get if it wanted too.

Though I also think that before either of them became a superpower, we would have had World War I with United States and Russia on one side against Confederate States, England, and France.

Answer 4

The Confederacy couldn't last. The loose confederacy had been tried earlier, if you'll recall, and been found wanting. And it was already on its way to becoming something of a set of police states, which would eventually have led to self-destruction, as they always do, even without the added onus of slavery, an economic anachronism that wasn't sustainable.
The merchants of the north would have still required a strong navy and imperialist expansion, but would have been somewhat restricted in its actions. They'd have had to invade at some point, anyway, so the question really winds up being one of when the war happened, not what if not.

Answer 5

The North as it had the greater industrial and financial capacity. With that comes the resources required to become a superpower. The South on the other hand had an agrarian economy that was heavily dependent on slave labour and a smaller population. As such it would not have been able to compete with the North.

Answer 6

That's tough because the North had the industrial power but the South had the agriculture. I think the South would've emerged a superpower though because agriculture is more important when compared to machines. Not to mention that many great inventors came out of the South.

Answer 7

The north

They had
1. more land
2. more natural resources (except oil but LA right now has tons of oil and we are #50 ranked in everything so oil isn't everything)
3. more people
4. more incoming immigrants
5. more factories

In fact, it would be just like today. Most of the rich and high ranked states are northern. Most of the southern states are relatively poor

Answer 8

Unfortunately the north was the industrial power, that's why they won.
All the gallantry in the world can't stop a more industrial state from making more weapons then them.

Answer 9

Great question. I was southern born and am also southern by choice.
I believe that the great South would have emerged as a superpower; slavery was on its way out and great southern inventors paved the way for an advanced South. And with the warmer climate, the North would have worshiped the South's agriculture. The South would have had strong ties and trading partners in Europe, and this would have bolstered the economic viability of the South. Furthermore, the North would have been slaves to Southern oil- it's a FACT.

Answer 10

The North. They had the industry and the infrastructure.

Answer 11

Love your "photo", Billy Bob Zeke-----The industrial north, more likely. The agrarian sub human slave owning southerners would have starred in NASCAR , romantic interludes with their favorite male hunting dog, in the back of their pickups, and shooting small mammals with automatic weapons, just as is the case now? :))) Just kidding ? :)