I often like to do thought experiments. How would history be different if something changed. It could be something like, how would the decade of the 1960s wound up in Kennedy had not been assassinated. It might have had a huge impact on the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement.
What would have happened if the USSR had made it to the moon first?
Of course there is no way of knowing how things would be different. Science Fiction has often postulated stories based on diverging time paths. Even real science tries to impose different outcomes for the same conditions. Under Shroedinger’s Cat Paradox something can live in two different states at the same time until the condition is observed from the outside.
So my thought experiment now is, “What would life be like in the USA, CSA and the World if the South had won the Civil War?
Would Slavery still exist in the CSA in 2020? Would the USA (North) have had to keep Slavery in order to compete on an equal footing with the CSA?. Would Slavery be accepted world wide or would it be confined to the CSA? Would the CSA have fought with or against the USA in the two World Wars?
The states that were admitted to the Union after 1865, would they have elected to join the USA or CSA? What would be the reputation of Lincoln if the Union was lost under his Presidency? Where would the USA capital be today since Virginia and Maryland were both considered part of the Confederacy.
What would life be for Black people living in the North? Would there still be systemic racism? Would Donald Trump, who was a citizen of New York been able to rise to the office of the Presidency in a United States with no southern states to support him?
There are no write or wrong or even knowable answers to these questions but a discussion of them can be very enlightening. Is Slavery wrong because the North won the war and declared it wrong? Or, would it be considered as something perfectly normal if the South had won the war. After all, there are still places in the world as recently as 30 years ago that practiced Apartheid and some today still have defacto Apartheid. Slavery is still practiced in some countries and by some people.
I am not going to put a poll in here but I am hoping this question generates some interesting comments and perspectives.