Suppose that after the Civil War, the US had become two separate countries.

[Polishprince]

Can you imagine what they would be like today? The end of the war would have left a devastated South and a heavily industrialized North.

Conservatives would have kept on as slave owners. They would have rebuilt their plantations.

The North would have remained heavily industrialized. Remember, the greatest institutions of American learning are located in the North, or what Conservatives call the "Liberal" part of the country.

Would western states have joined the growing "North" with it's innovation, freedom and centers or learning? Or would they have joined the south with it's slavery, unrest and plantations, including the South's religious mandate.

Would the south had become similar to what is going on in the North Bank and Gaza?

Today, Southern slates are kept afloat by liberal and northern money subsidizing. What would they do without all that Blue State money?

You have a pretty stupid view of things, actually.

First of all, all areas of the country were a lot more religious in the 19th century. Lincoln was no atheistic secular humanist, and neither was Grant, Hayes, Garfield or Arthur.

Second, if one section of the country broke off, others would as well. Lincoln kept the union together, there may have been several nations , not just 2. And the development of the west might never have occurred nor the great gilded age. The great post civil war industrialization might have looked differently as well as immigration from Europe.

 

[JWBooth]

Ca

The southern states would be a banana republic. With its poor fleeing to the northern states.

Carpetbaggers first.

 

[Polishprince]

The southern states would be a banana republic. With its poor fleeing to the northern states.

Its not warm enough to grow bananas in Dixie. They grew cotton and tobacco.

2 very profitable cash crops. Southern plantations were quite wealthy during the antebellum days

Further, beginning in the 1870's,the South began industrializing as well. Birmingham Alabama was founded in the 1870's, major steel hub. If the tax situation was better in Alabama, maybe Carnegie and Frick would have located a lot more industry there.

 

[Picaro]

The Cotton Kingdom had already reached its natural limits by 1850; it wasn't go to grow any more. If the North had kept their tariffs without the South to pay them, the South would have boomed with imports and competing manufacturers would have sprung up like weeds all over the South. The North would have devolved back into relying on agricultural and timber exports like every other Third World country that only relies on natural resources exports. The South would have dominated both the Atlantic trade and the Mississippi trade and the South American trade as well as most of the western trade. This was the reason Lincoln deliberately started the war, to keep the South from seceding. As for slavery, it was already in decline, and that was predicted by Henry Clay and Daniel Webster both. Industrial economies aren't cost effective; it requires employers to toss out employees and let them starve or die in slums every so often, while slavery in the south allowed slaves to feed themselves year round.

You can find a series of economic studies at EH Net and NBER on how immigrant labor affected standards of living in the north and northwest online.

 

[mikegriffith1]

Oh, boy. I guess you're not aware that by March 1865, the Confederacy had begun a gradual emancipation program that offered freedom to slaves who would volunteer to serve in the Confederate army. At least two companies of black Confederate soldiers were raised by this measure. Before then, several thousand slaves volunteered to serve in the CSA army in exchange for freedom or a promise of freedom after serving--these were state and individual initiatives.

Black Confederates

 

[Yarddog]

Can you imagine what they would be like today? The end of the war would have left a devastated South and a heavily industrialized North.

Conservatives would have kept on as slave owners. They would have rebuilt their plantations.

The North would have remained heavily industrialized. Remember, the greatest institutions of American learning are located in the North, or what Conservatives call the "Liberal" part of the country.

Would western states have joined the growing "North" with it's innovation, freedom and centers or learning? Or would they have joined the south with it's slavery, unrest and plantations, including the South's religious mandate.

Would the south had become similar to what is going on in the North Bank and Gaza?

Today, Southern slates are kept afloat by liberal and northern money subsidizing. What would they do without all that Blue State money?

All conservatives don't think the same just as well as all Liberals don't think the same. Both those terms are used very loosely these days. Trying to somehow link modern American Conservatives today to slavery... as if most of us would actually want it is pretty crappy. but thats the parrallel your trying to make. What is this? a teaching moment?

 

[whitehall]

Liberal democrats were the slave owners. A liberal democrat freaking stage actor murdered Lincoln. Under liberal democrat (racist) policies the South would probably have ended up like downtown L.A. with people living under tarps (purchased in the North).