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[krispos42]

26. Yes

The alternative would have been the US and the CS making a midget-sized armed camp of North America: a long border with a well-armed rival nation. European empires playing the US and the CS against each other. And the web of alliances that caused the domino effect in Europe that lead to WW1 would have gotten us involved, too.

With one part of America on the side of the Allies and the other on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, we would have had the meat-grinding battles of trench warfare here in the states. Virginia and Maryland would have become the scenes of horrific frontal assaults into machine-gun fire and chemical-weapons artillery barrages.

Furthermore, there was the risk that other states of the Confederacy or the Union would have split up, resulting in the Balkanization of the present-day United States. It was sixty years between the Civil War and WW1; plenty of time for this kind of stuff. If the US or the CS (or both) were involved in fighting civil wars as other states try to leave (for example, Texas leaving the Confederacy), this would have resulted in a more-or-less permanent war economy and authoritiarian government, including conscription, as North America was buried in plots and counter-plots to steal technology, military secrets, perform false-flag acts of terrorism, election manipulation, propaganda, etc. Not to mention border flare-ups.

You know how the Europeans were always fighting among themselves? Yeah, same thing here now, with the British on the north stirring things up and the Spanish in the south doing the same, perhaps acting through Mexico, which would be pissed after losing the Mexican-American War back in '48.

And we can't overlook the possibility of a Communist rebellion in the South at some point, either, by the slaves, which would just make the the entire CS a mess and the attendant loss of life. Purges, counter-purges, the US (or somebody) takes advantage of the situation and invades...



Ugh.