"How would the CSA be different to the USA?" Topic

Hi,
If the CSA had ended up as an independent country, in terms of political organisation how would it be different to the USA? Would it be a looser federation or would it actually exist at all if the CSA won the civil war? If it were to be a country, how was it supposed to run and organised?
Just curious (and genuinely ignorant!)
All the best,
George.

There was a time when such a question would have been fun to answer, because it would have been merely in the realm of "what if"? Unfortunately, contemplating the issue is no longer cute or fun. Suffice to say, many of the issues of the ACW are again alive and well, including talk of secession because some do not like the outcome of a national election. I would direct you to a 2004 black humor mockumentary called: Confederate States of America. Its premise is a present time CSA.

I think Harry Turtledove covered this.

One question. What would have constituted a 'win' for the CSA? I know that they indeed fired the first rounds in that conflict, but did they have what is now termed an "exit strategy" for what they wanted or willing to accept as far as a winning goal for the war?

Everything else is immaterial if they did not, or were they just making it up as they went along?

For one thing, they would have slaves.

One of the GURPS Alternate Earths books also covers this, although I think it's a slightly future sci-fi version.

The CSA was originally organized just like the federal government with the three branches of the government. There were senators and congressmen from the member states and the there were even seats established for representatives from the Indian nations, but I don't think they were ever filled. The war ended before a supreme court could be established. The idea that slavery would still exist could be debated. The CSA constitution outlawed the international slave trade. So slavery as an institution in the south would have existed longer but the question is for how much longer?

I think Harry Turtledove covered this.

I think Ward Moore covered it first.

Hi, many thanks to everyone for their answers. I don't mean to stir up any feelings relevant to modern US politics.
My question was prompted by the Independence referendum we had
today in Scotland. Some people have described it as secession.
That got me thinking about the ACW. I knew individual states seceded and then the Confederacy was formed but I realised I didn't know what sort of government it was, hence my question. I know a bit about the background to the war, a lot about the military aspects of the war but almost nothing about the politics of the Confederacy or how it was governed. The answers have been very interesting and useful.
All the best,
George.

The constitution adopted by the Confederate States of America was virtually identical to the US constitution. The main difference was that the president served a six year term and that the right to own slaves was guaranteed specifically.

The whole notion that the South was rebelling against an oppressive and over-centralized federal government is much more of a modern idea than what was thought at the time. The US Federal government of 1860 was tiny and had little direct impact on the lives of the people. Things like a Department of Education, or Public Health or all those other modern additions did not exist back then. There were no direct taxes on the citizens. Indeed, the only Federal law of the time that could actually reach into a citizen's home was the Fugitive Slave Law.

The only "oppressive" Federal action the South feared was that they might, with the election of Lincoln, try to take steps to curb slavery. So, after they seceded, they created a new government that was nearly identical to the government they had just left--except that slavery was absolutely protected.

Less of a European focus and more of a Latin American one.

Fewer foreign wars. Weaker tech. Stronger social structures.

'For one thing, they would have slaves.'

Actually, probably not for long. There would be a lot of pressure from trading partners, neighbours, allies, etc to abolish slavery. I think that slavery would soon have become uneconomic, though possibly it would survive 20-30 years.

I find it hard to believe the CSA would start a war over slavery, losing hundreds of thousands of men then turn around and say you know slavery doesn't make much sense.
The men who started the war were going to keep their slaves forever

Gray Ghost makes a very good point. If the South had been allowed to secede peacefully then, yes, after thirty or forty years slavery might have petered out. But if hundreds of thousands of Southern boys had died to preserve it, I think they would have hung onto it as long as they possibly could.

I think some of the "oh, they/we would have abandoned slavery very quickly" sentiment is revisionist whitewashing (see what I did there), and disingenuous at best. The ardent segregationists of the latter 20th century are a clear testimony to that.

The South chose to die on that hill; no way it was going to abandon it willingly.

Here's a British comedy/mocumentary on the subject. imdb.com/title/tt0389828

It was pretty entertaining and also had some seriously disturbing commercials about actual products that existed sometime during America's history.

Worth watching for the entertainment value.

It would suck a whole lot more than it does…
Not hard to figure out why.
Peter

And how long would it have lasted before regional differences caused a further fragmenting of the south? There where a lot of tnesions prior to the ACW, besides slavery, although no question that was the biggest. with the president in hand would any of those pushed a further break up?

owen

Badger22 has it right. The only reason that several states hadn't already carried out a second secession was the obvious need to stand together against the Federals. Even then there was a rather disturbing level of non-cooperation going on, such as Gov. Brown's refusal to let Georgian assets be used to arm other states' forces.

South Carolina was already, by 1863, miffed by the western states' insistence on having the CS government finance "internal improvements" such as river navigation and harbor projects. And Texas was unhappy about the easterner's lack of support against Mexican pretensions and Comanche incursions.

Eastern Tennessee, the western Carolinas and northern Georgia and Alabama were hotbeds of counter-secession (western Virginia had already shown it could be done).

And policies about the slave trade and free blacks were sectional tinderboxes as well.

A good read on this is Road to Disunion by William Freehling.

Another difference in the CSA constitution – it specifically stated the right to secede, nowhere written in the US constitution.

As for the uneconomical argument, that had been used in the early 1800's. The international slave trade was outlawed in 1808. This allowed Virginia and Maryland to breed and supply slaves to the other states without competing with cheaper African slaves. The invention of the cotton gin changed the economic value of slave labor. Cotton was like what oil is these days.

Slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1890 largely because other Latin Americans looked down on Brazil. It was international pressure and not economics.

I suspect slavery would have gone by the wayside, but Jim Crow or some other apartheid-like system would have continued for some time.

The constitution adopted by the Confederate States of America was virtually identical to the US constitution. The main difference was that the president served a six year term and that the right to own slaves was guaranteed specifically.

The structure of three branches was the same, but the powers that each branch had and the power retained by the Con-federal government was far more limited.

It was basically the Early Articles of Confederation in place before it's weaknesses drove the leaders to call for a Constitutional Convention.

If you want to know what the Confederate government would have been like after a successful war, just follow Davis' efforts to have the Confederacy act like a united nation at war. He continually complained that Lincoln had far more power than he did. The individual states were also continually overriding or ignoring Davis's governments' decisions on everything from taxation to where troops would be sent or raised. Unlike the Union which had military districts, Davis could never get a similar system to work because it required grouping states within on district and the states generally didn't agree with or recognize the need for military districts.

It didn't take too long for a couple of you to try and derail this one.

From several others, though, interesting comments.

My opinion (for what it is worth)

1) The CSA would probably had suffered additional seccesions as pointed above probably around the 1880s. Either SC or Virginia would go.

2) Slavery would last to 1890-1900, after that either an apartheid system, or some kind of unequal electoral system. For example free african=americans get the vote, but there vote counts only 3/5ths of a white vote. Probably try to restrcit voting to the properioted classes anyway.

3) Increased industrialisation in the rump CSA probably around the 1920s-1950s would lead to increased centralistion, civil rights movement, and probably violence. Far right and far left factions willing to use violence to change and resist change.

4) S.C would be a failed state. Neither the USA or CSA will want them back.

Altenrnatevly the sectional differences and economic conflcits feed political instability ala Mexico, with the US intervening at times.

Another difference in the CSA constitution – it specifically stated the right to secede, nowhere written in the US constitution

there is nothing in the CSA constitution that says that any CSA State has the right to leave the CSA.
a good book covering the succession is Look Away by William C Davis

The CSA would serve grits with most meals …

One of the main differences would be that the Confederacy started out, at least, as a one-party oligarchy. Whether another party (or other parties) would later appear is anybody's guess.

Also, if secession had succeeded once, it would have been used again whenever an issue came up that generated enough dissension. So, very likely, it would have eventually split up into several countries.

Fewer foreign wars. Weaker tech. Stronger social structures.

More likely just the opposite: the CSA would have wanted to conquer more territory in the Caribbean and Mexico/Central America.

First of all, I've read a supplement from Avalanche press with some interesting ideas here:

link

These are my own speculations, but I am a historian who specialized in the US South in the 19th and 20th centuries (No, I won't give my real name, I very much want to keep my gaming identity separate from career in academia).

A great deal of the industrialization of the "New South" during the late 19th century was funded by Northern businesses and many of the factories were managed on-site by Northerners. I would expect to still see some of that, but less so that historically. I would also expect to see some British investors taking over the role historically held by Northerners. However, neither source of funding would put Southern industry on the same footing it was historically (which is itself fairly small in comparison to the UK or the Northeastern US).

I would also expect the CSA to be on very good terms with the UK and/or France depending on their various involvement in the Civil War. If the UK were involved at all I would expect the "Special Relationship" to exist between the CSA and the UK and NOT the USA and the UK. Likewise if the French intervened but the UK stood aside I would expect a "Special Relationship" between France and the CSA to develop (and French would be THE standard foreign language taught in the white CSA schools).

Given the mediocre size of CSA industry I would expect most ships in the navy and much of the army's equipment to be produced in Europe, with the dominant suppliers being France and/or the UK, especially if a "special relationship" existed. Certainly the eventual CSAF would be largely foreign designs. What domestic equipment did exist would probably be on the scale of that produced by (for example) Taiwan or Norway, smaller nations with some domestic arms production. The CSA would be vastly larger and more populous than those nations, but its industrial production would be on par.

The CSA would have lenient gun ownership laws (at least for whites) and the USA would likely have strict ones (on par with most of Europe and Asia today). State militiamen would keep assault rifles at home like the Swiss do today, but without sealed supplies ammunition as the Swiss have. Ammunition would be easily available and, because it is cheaper to buy in bulk, CSA militiamen would keep thousands of rounds at home as a matter of course.

I would expect interpersonal violence to be more common in the CSA and less common in the remaining USA. Given the exaggerated sense of personal honor among Southerners of the 19th century I would expect duels and similar deadly interactions to be relatively common. Likewise violent feuds between aristocratic families might still take place, with the law looking the other way when such actions took place within the bounds of established social norms and mores.

Kentucky and possibly Missouri would join the CSA at some point (indeed this might be the very reason for a CSA victory). This might also lead to a second Civil War depending on the time and conditions.

Women would enjoy fewer rights than they do today in the South. Coverture might still be the law and marriages might require a father's legal consent. However miscegenation laws might never develop, and if they did white men would be exempt from them in practice if not theory.

Southern aristocrats would likely still refer to themselves as "Anglo-Normans" not "Anglo-Saxons" as was the case historically. That usage might also spread to the remaining population of whites, as was often the case with such ideas historically.

On a broader scale the development of an independent CSA would change the broader course of history. There might be no World War I, or if there were, if might be very different from the historic conflict. Among other I would not be surprised to see the Raj still ruling over India, Spheres of Influence still present in China, and colonialism still in full stride around the globe.

Having said that as a historian, I am from the North, but live in Georgia, and what follows is more personal observation. There is a massive amount of racism still present here. Racist remarks are seldom spoken in public, but I have been amazed at the number of racist comments I have heard from people of all races once they "get comfortable talking to you" (sometimes preceded by something along the lines of "you're not like other people of [insert your race here] so I feel comfortable telling you that…" in some cases where appropriate). Even racial divisions that would be ignored elsewhere are given serious credence here, and I have been told, in all seriousness "Jews aren't really white people" from whites and "Light-skin ain't the right skin" from African-Americans. I do not mean any of that as political commentary, simply societal observations.

With that in mind, I would be amazed if a modern day CSA did not at least have legalized segregation along the lines of Apartheid, and I would not be surprised to see slavery still present. Economic conditions (and sanctions) might determine the fate of slavery, but African-Americans would not be equal before the law.

Optional- Why do you feel that traditional Imperialism/Empires would still be prevalent? What would a CSA victory and existence in 2014 have contributed to cause that?

Don Lowry is the only one that caught on to one of the basic problems of the South- a one-party oligarchy which even during the war conceived of itself in surprisingly un-democratic terms for all its bloviating about "freedom and Democracy." The Twenty Salves rules was the first real harbinger as to what the planter elite envisioned as this "brave new Republic" it wanted. This measure was one of the most divisive imagined and clearly set up a class-caste barrier that caused immense resentment in the rank and file Southerners.

The problem with the South was that the slaveowners really considered themselves of a higher order of humanity than the poor non-slave holding whites, and certainly several levels of humanity above the slaves. In fact they viewed the poor whites almost as the Germans in WWII viewed the "Mischlings" that is half jewish Germans who were often spared the concentration camp, but were not really accepted or trusted. The planeter class saw their republic as of the planters, by the planters, and for the planters, and the whites and slaves as the eternal hewers of wood and carriers of water.

There would have been deep and dangerous social passions unleased after the war had the South survived.

Even as it was one can read in books like John Mack Faragher "Sugar Creek, Life on the Illinois Frontier" that a large proportion of the settlers for the Midwest, Illinois, Indiana, and so forth came not from the East but from the poor upcountry south where they had been squeezed out into by the plantation and slave holding states in the South. This meant that much of the Midwest was anti-slavery from bitter experience. This did not mean they loved the negro or was sympathetic to him, but they hated the slaveholders.

I suspect that shortly after the War any confederacy would have lost Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and probably the upcountries of Georgia, Virginia and Alabama to secession from the secessionist.

An historian does not traditionally embrace "what if" scenarios. In fact, we were tought not to engage in such conjecture. I also grew up in the south, having been born in New York. As a military family, I found there to be no more racism in the south than in any of the other places I lived. I have called many addresses home, but I consider Alabama to be my home. Having spent 25 of my 50 plus years in North Alabama, which included elementary school through early college, I had classmates and friends of all racial make up. Never did anyone take me aside and say, Bill, I know you're just a Mexican guy, but we think of you as white. As far as the root question here, what would it be like if the CSA still existed? How can anyone pretend to have any knowledge of that scenario. No one now knows. No one shall ever know.

An historian does not traditionally embrace "what if" scenarios. In fact, we were taught not to engage in such conjecture.

I can imagine that being the message when dealing with narrative history, [I've heard it too] but the second you try to understand participant's actions and decisions, speculation and conjecture begins, simply in an effort to understand why that path, rather than this one.

I've been taught by history professors not to 'speculate' only to read them doing it in their own works in an effort to explain what did happen and why. Here it is just an entertaining exercise, but I don't see how historians can avoid conjecture and the benefits of speculation in understanding 'what happened.'

McLaddie, I am not saying its not fun and attractive to do so. I am only saying that it is not history, and not the practice of historians to present conjecture in a light of historical validity. The fun part of this hobby of ours is the what if. What if we can out do Lee or Grant or Sherman? What happens if I beat Grant at Vicksburg? But alas, we are just playing games and not re-writing history.

"I suspect slavery would have gone by the wayside, but Jim Crow or some other apartheid-like system would have continued for some time."

Hell, we got our ass kicked (thank God, or whatever you call "Him", "Her", "It") & the Jim Crow Laws lasted, Southern wide, till at least the mid-late 1960's. That's 100 years. I remember them. Do you? And some still do. Sad, people, sad….

Hi,
Many thanks to everyone for their excellent contributions and for giving me an idea of what the Confederacy would have been like had it been an independent country. I found it very interesting that in terms of government organisation it would have been so similar to the USA, but maybe as it was earlier in its history when the federal government was looser.
One of the things that got me thinking about the whole thing is the result of the Scottish independence referendum. We voted no but the Scottish parliament is to get more powers and there is talk of regional assemblies for the rest of the UK. This means we could have a federation of some sort and that got me thinking about the best federal country I know, the USA. I know a fair bit about how it federal government works but I was curious to know about the Confederacy and whether it would be run in a different way.
All the best,
George

I don't agree with optional field. Why would British industrialists have built factories in the CSA to compete with their factories in the UK? Better to keep the CSA unindustrialized so you could sell it manufactured goods in return for its cotton, tobacco, and other things that could not be grown in the UK. As for gun ownership, the western states/territories (places like Montana and Nevada), still mostly rural, would still have been in the US.

As for the UK now going to some form of federation -- maybe better late than never: if it had done that in the early 1770s, giving each American colony representation in a federal parliament, there never would have been an American Revolution! It'd be nice if all the English-speaking countries could form a super-federation!

As for historians not being "allowed" to speculate about alternative history, that's one more thing wrong with the way history is taught today! If you don't understand the alternatives, you don't understand the outcomes, nor the people who made the choices (but then, in today's history, people don't count, only vast impersonal forces).

One of the things that got me thinking about the whole thing is the result of the Scottish independence referendum. We voted no but the Scottish parliament is to get more powers and there is talk of regional assemblies for the rest of the UK. This means we could have a federation of some sort and that got me thinking about the best federal country I know, the USA. I know a fair bit about how it federal government works but I was curious to know about the Confederacy and whether it would be run in a different way.

Not really.

Well, not successfully for any real length of time. Look at how long the Articles of Confederation lasted. 1781 to 1789, 1777 if you go all the way back to when the Articles were sent out for ratification to 1788 when the Constitution was put to the states for ratification. So 11 years at the longest.

And that's about how long I'd expect to see the CSA last after they miraculously won the Civil War. A decade.

Heck, the Europeans are seeing the issues with the partial union in the EU right now (and I'm amazed it's taken this long to show troubles). The troubles with the Euro (currency) can be squarely laid at the fact that while the EU has a monetary union, there is no fiscal union. It is inherently impossible for, say, Germany to maintain a 'tight' money policy when Italy is maintaining a 'loose' money policy.

I'd also expect a lot of the South to be much smaller than today. Appalachia is almost certain to have split away from the Confederacy, being more vital to the industrialized North than the South.

I suspect that shortly after the War any confederacy would have lost Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and probably the upcountries of Georgia, Virginia and Alabama to secession from the secessionist.

Exactly.

Whether they'd successfully petition to joining the Union is a different story, but the Confederacy would be be greatly reduced in size, basically to just the cotton-producing areas of the current states.

The boll weevil would have utterly devastated the economy of the CSA. In fact, the damages would have been worse if the South was a separate nation. Remember that there was basically one industry in the South: cotton. Almost everything else existed to support the cultivation of cotton. Cotton represented 60% of the South's economy in 1860.

This is a modern map showing percentage of acres of Upland Cotton harvested in 2007:

You can see the sweep of where cotton is grown: A few counties in southeast Virginia, the piedmont (ocean-facing plains) of North and South Carolina, southern Georgia, big chunks of Alabama, Florida panhandle, and up the Mississippi river in Louisiana, Arkansas, and western Tennessee. That swath of green is what I expect the CSA to look like ~10 years after the Civil War.

Personally, I cannot imagine not having textile mills (and LOTS of them) in the deep South, but the South was (and America still is) exporting raw cotton bales, not finished goods. There's a much bigger markup on finished goods than there is on raw materials. But the Plantation class never really thought about industrializing in that way. And that lack of industrializing is what would have doomed the CSA in the 1920s as the boll weevil hit.

if they had successfully broke away I think they would have been fighting their own civil war with in 15 years. As that map shows it was the cotton south that wanted out, most rest were rather ambiguous about independence, and I was surprised how much opposition there was in the non cotton producing parts.
In the CSA constitution slavery was protected at the federal level, States had no power to interfere with it.
I do believe it would have eventually evolved into a kind of serf society, slaves in all but name.

I think speculation is ok and sometimes fun but it has to based in real possibilities not fantasy, asking what is the ANV were armed with ak-47s is not real speculation.
also basing your real life opinion on what might have been is also for me entering the realm of fantasy.

Kentucky and possibly Missouri would join the CSA at some point (indeed this might be the very reason for a CSA victory). This might also lead to a second Civil War depending on the time and conditions.

these States had their chance and they chose not to.

The South was not all cotton. It also grew quite a bit of tobacco (VA, NC, TN, KY), and other commercial crops such as rice (GA coast). Not to mention horses, cattle, and slaves.

Someone above said slavery would slowly die because the slave trade had been outlawed. This ignores the ability to grow more domestically (even sire-ing your own!) Most of the slave owners supported the ban on importing more slaves, because of the law of supply and demand -- importing new slaves lowered the value of the slaves they already owned.

The South was not all cotton. It also grew quite a bit of tobacco (VA, NC, TN, KY), and other commercial crops such as rice (GA coast). Not to mention horses, cattle, and slaves.

Cotton was "only" 60% (directly) of the CSA's economy in 1860. As in, cotton exports alone accounted for 60% of the CSA's gross national product.

This isn't counting all the support industries that existed to export cotton, like virtually all of the slave trade, the various small foundries that made parts for cotton gins, etc.

The South's economy was so skewed towards exporting cotton that they didn't grow enough food!

Hmm,after those elements I am more and more convinced that a CSA would have a historical trajectory very similar to a state like Colombia, Venezuela or Brazil. Definetly an agrarian populist movement demanding land redistribution morping into a marxist revolutionary movement, with the state formenting racism as a way to break any popualist alliance between african americans and poor white farmers (which is what happened to a point in the 1890s in Georgia).

I expect caudillismo, and import substitution as well.

Suffice to say a very nasty place to live in.

Dear List

Don Lowry makes a good point about British investment. Careful reading in McPherson and others shows one important fact. The South was mortgaged from their shiny boots to the pink ribbons in their women's hair to the English and the Yankees. They literally worked their grandiose plantations
on the tab" to English and yankee banks who brought the books up to date at the end of the year and somehow the Southerners always just broke even or even were heavily in debt. The amazing lack of liquidity of the Southern Slave system is staggering. They had very little cash left over after the Yanks and English had their way with them, and dealt with a rather inelastic market. The European cotton factors paid them what they wanted. It is not too far an exaggeration to say that the Southern slave holders were slaves themselves. As one writer said, the Southern Aristocrat was born and was swaddled in yankee cloths and went into the ground in an English Winding Sheet. The only
"wealth" they had that was disposable WAS the slaves, and to sell them off was to abandon not only upper class status, but was likely going to prove hopeless unprofitatble. You may OWN A million dollars in slaves, but who is going to buy them? That is, who has the money to buy them?

& the Jim Crow Laws lasted, Southern wide, till at least the mid-late 1960's

The Jim Crow Laws did not exist at the time of the Civil War. They first began to be enacted in 1876. While racism of course existed prior to the war, segregation was more of a social status thing than a race issue; slaves and laborers (black or white) didn't "mix" with upper class whites. Indeed, racial segregation on the post-war level would have been non-functional for Southern culture at the time, as white aristocrats expected to be able to travel with their black maids and valets. Trundling these to another part of the train or carriage would not have been acceptable, not to mention a different hotel! Furthermore, among the lower class whites, these at least "knew" they were "better" than the slaves. But after emancipation, the class structure got thrown for a loop. The freed blacks gained political equality (and briefly dominance) over the lower class whites, and, being willing to work the same level of labor for less pay, cut into the lower class income. Add the economic troubles brought by the war and suddenly the lower class whites are looking for someone to blame; who better than the former slaves that the war was supposedly about? Cue the KKK and, with the restoration of the upper class political authority under Andrew Johnson, Jim Crow.
Even then, some upper class whites opposed the segregation laws. Robert E. Lee's own daughter was arrested in Richmond for seating herself in the "Colored" section of a trolley, a personal protest effort that preceded Rosa Parks by half a century.
So a victorious South would not have necessarily produced the Jim Crow version of racial segregation, though of course the de facto segregation of slavery would have continued at least for a while. Not much different, and equally oppressive (or more, actually), but not the same.

As for the rest, I'm not certain the CSA would have fractured post-victory as quickly as some assume. The flush of victory has a power that might have continued a desire for unity of some sort. But at the same time, the South did not have the effective industrialization and transportation systems to sustain its economy in the long term, and regional bickering would have taken its toll as well. I don't see a CSA surviving as anything other than a second world nation into the late 20th century. The implications for the rest of the world, however, would be profound. Would the US have continued its westward expansion? Would the industrialization of the late 19th and early 20th centuries have been as vigorous? Would the US have gotten involved in Latin America? Certainly a Spanish-American War would not have come about, nor US expansion into the Pacific, nor the opening of Japan. Certainly American involvement in The Great War would have been unlikely, and what then would have been the outcome of that? Would it have resulted in the defeat of the Central Powers, at least as thoroughly? Would that have triggered the weak Weimar Republic and the rise of fascism? What about the opposition to communism and eventually Stalin? Absent a US presence in the Pacific, what would Japan have done? Or would Japan have remained an isolated, non-industrial kingdom rather than a militaristic pseudo-Western colonialist empire? Would there have been a WWII? Would there have been a Cold War? Men on the Moon? And on and on.
In some ways, Gettysburg may have been a keystone to more history than anyone has thought.

Best read: Bring the Jubilee by Ward Moore

The deep South's economy was skewed heavily towards cotton because that was where the money was. Once the War started large areas converted to the production of food. While Southern pre-war industry was skewed towards supporting the production of cotton, tobacco, rice and sugar, again that was where the demand was.

Assuming the South's prewar economic base survived largely intact, one interesting question would be whether the CSA would have skewed towards free trade as certain pre-War politicians favored, or whether they would have gone protectionist to protect the increasing industry of the upper South from competition from the US.

The CSA would have been more likely to meddle in Latin American that even the USA was historically. A Spanish-Confederate War was likely over Cuba, but probably would not have involved the Pacific.

Japan had already been "opened" before the War.

Not sure what you mean by continued US westward expansion. It had already expanded to the west coast. Only Alaska and Hawaii have been added since the War. Maybe you mean: Would the West have been filled in with population as fast? I don't see why not. Population pressure and cheap land would still have existed.

One has to wonder how the CSA thought they were going to keep their slaves down on the farm (plantation) once they gained their independence. With thousands of miles of border with the USA, which no longer had reason to keep a fugitive slave law on the books, the leakage would have been tremendous.

bong67 I recommend this book.

"A Government of Our Own": The Making of the Confederacy (1994) by William C. Davis

link

The CSA would be another South Africa. It would slowly go from slavery to something like apartheid. The two countries would have each other as their only trading partner.

Would their have been another war with the USA over the western frontier?

Would their have been another war with the USA over the western frontier?

I rather doubt it. Not much of the US west of Texas was suitable for cotton or other platation-style crops -- although quite a bit of cotton is now grown in California, with the help of a lot of irrigation. (Even though we're in a state-wide drought.)