So, Ted Nugent is in trouble AGAIN, this time for saying that the CSA should have "won" the Civil War so that we didn't have Universal Healthcare in Detroit.
This is immensely stupid on its face, as the CSA wasn't looking to preserve their interpretation of the Constitution IN THE NORTH, which is where Nugent was born.
But the Nuge wasn't the only one not paying attention. A lot of people criticizing him have taken the assumption that the CSA wanted to conquer the USA. There's even a docu-fiction where the CSA takes over the US.
Most of the military-political leadership of the CSA wanted to take a little bit of "free" territory, but they had no designs on anything north of Maryland. Their attempts to get around to the capital had to do with forcing a surrender from Lincoln and company. Their incursion in Pennsylvania had more to do with securing a foothold for that strategy.
The CSA was not a good idea. It would have resulted in decades (or even over a century) of continued slavery in North America, and the cruel treatment and deaths of millions of people. I have little doubt that if the USA entered WW I and II on the side of the Allies, that the CSA would have joined the Axis, and there would be very few Jews living there today. I also suspect they would not have allowed Texas to go back to Mexico without a fight, or several fights, and there may have been anti-Latino pogroms as a result.
That said ... I sometimes wonder about things the way that Nugent does ...
The South would not have taken over the North in all likelihood. Most historians agree that their political/military leadership were looking for a surrender that allowed them to maintain their borders. It would have been a messy break, but a break.
As I said, it's only a passing thought, because I would never want all those people to remain in bondage, but sometimes I wonder whether they wouldn't have been able to keep the slaves from rebelling continuously.
And, since all the mechanization was in the North, the USA would have gotten wealthier, had free states extending into the West (Utah would be part of the Union, as Mormons would have been HATED in the Confederacy) ... and probably have been smuggling arms to the "free slave" rebels in the CSA.
They never would have been able to fight us to expand into the West by the end of the 1800s, as we would have had massive numbers of Gatling guns and probably would have used gas weapons against them. It would look like the Boer War that the British fought in South Africa.
And, if history had been similar, it's quite likely the CSA would have joined the Axis in WW I and WW II. Any Jews who didn't flee in the second engagement would die, adding another sad chapter to the history of FDR (or whomever was president) looking the other way. That said, the Fascist powers wouldn't have been able to run arms too well to the CSA, and the CSA industrial machine would have been quite embryonic. Heck, Ford and Lindbergh wouldn't have ever been taken seriously, nor Father Coughlin, because the CSA's pledging to the Axis would push the USA into the war on the Allied side much faster ... and we would get out of the end of the Depression sooner. Actually, without a CSA, we might have Al Smith in 1928 and FDR after that. Or a Republican like Teddy Roosevelt ushering in the New Deal. We might even have insulated ourselves against the Great Depression for the most part.
It would have led to Texas being taken back by Mexico as part of a settlement in WW I or II.
And JFK never would have been shot in Dallas by an assassin that may have been funded by Texas Oil Men.
No LBJ, but no need for a Civil Rights Act on that scale, as reforms might have slowly come into being in the USA over the entire 20th Century. That's not to say that there wouldn't be plenty of racism and wage abuse of former slaves, but as one example, the KKK could not extend contiguously from Florida to New York because in the North it would be seen as an anti-governmental militia. It would have been stunted if not squashed altogether.
And "freed slaves" would still be streaming north and west, as they did around the time of the Spanish-American War and WW II. They'd just have to escape. That's a big deal, but they'd maybe be welcomed more as the "enemy of my enemy" and part of the growing industrial fist that we used to prevent Southern incursion.
We'd be complaining nowadays about jobs going to the Third World nation of the CSA.
Eventually, in the 1950s-1990s, we'd be installing dictators there through the CIA to hedge our bets against the Soviets.
No Cuban Missile Crisis, though. We wouldn't care about Florida.
Retirees would go to Southern California for the better part of the 20th Century. Or skip down by plane to Mexico.
Meth drug cartels would rise faster.
Clinton would have passed universal health care.
Or maybe Nixon.
Actually, there wouldn't be a Clinton. Or an Al Gore.
To be honest, there wouldn't be a Nixon victory.
The US political parties would look like the Tories and Labour.
We might have joined up with Canada by this time in history, pressured by the existence of the EU. But there wouldn't be a NAFTA. I'm not even sure the CSA would have joined in a pact with Mexico after decades of bad blood.
No Dukes of Hazard. No Johnny Cash. No Ray Charles.
We'd have Trent Reznor, but no Marilyn Manson.
Ted Nugent would be a lounge singer in Detroit without an audience of note.
But, no nuclear weapons situated in those states, preventing us from ever allowing them to break away now.
We'd be making darn sure of that, as we do for most nations.
So, Nugent is wrong, but some days ... I know what he means ... sort of.