What would have happened to America if the south had won the war?Would it have b

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   sharonchristyposted 13 years ago

   What would have happened to America if the south had won the war?Would it have been better that way?
   
   The book butterfly effect says that Chamberlain changed the history of the whole nation by triumphing at Gettysburg, 400 people mistook the beaten horde of storming chargers for reinforcement and ran for their lives losing the war. The say the results of any otherwise would have changed everything. The south on Gone with the Wind and the south presented in the books have very controversial and opposing portrayals. Which would have been better for the nation?

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   tsmogposted 13 years ago

   Remember they were seceding from the union. If they would have won, then in theory there would have been multiple nations. Historically one a traditional agricultural economy and the other blossoming into an industrial based economy. One having access to the finery of life - spices, tobacco, whiskey, rum and the other willing to trade manufactured good for them. A great big key is cotton. Cotton was in essence the economy for the South, the North, Great Britain, Europe generally speaking and the growing textile industry in Canada too. Some say the war was really won on the seas and the battles on land just sealed the deal. Hence the saying cotton is king or king cotton.
   
   That said, then how would the west have been determined. Would California have remained a province of Mexico? Or how about Arizona? What about the Indian Wars? Would the Indians have become allies with either the South or the North in that movement west. Or, if peace was negotiated, would it have become disrupted once again over the settlement of the west?

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   Attikosposted 13 years ago

   Better for whom? Certainly for the Southerners, who were colonized and impoverished for four generations. Certainly not for the northerners, who gained an economic empire that to a degree survives today. Perhaps for most of the rest of the world, much of which has been subjected to the expansion of that empire, enforced by the so far invincible US military. Perhaps not for the Europeans, who might have experienced different outcomes of the World Wars and the Cold War. As is the case with all "what if" questions, the answer is more complex than it at first seems, and is ultimately unknowable.

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