Footnote to previous post: I'm assuming the author is not a moron in the first place, obviously, and is able to treat the subject matter in relevant, interesting ways for the game. Not as apologism/revisionism/whatever non-gaming agenda a misguided designer might have writing his RPG supplement.

Quote from: Tetsubo;425775Including slavery isn't the issue. Handwaving it away as some minor detail is though. Deadlands says, 'Hey Black Folks, it's all good, the CSA wasn't that bad!' It's an insult to millions of people.

I completely agree.

It's funny, systems which are inherently full of prejudice and tension sometimes DO manage a peaceful transition without war or conquest.

The best example is possibly how women got the vote in England through peaceful protest of the suffragettes etc. Obviously, the position of women in England was infinitely superior to that of blacks during slavery, so please, don't get me wrong, I'm not making light of the black experience. But we had a deeply entrenched system going back more than a thousand years which broadly denied women political power (notwithstanding the occasional Queen). Married women were little more than chattels at law. In fact the law was still thought to be that a husband could not be guilty of rape of his wife (her consent being irreversible within marriage) until 1992 or so when case-law reversed that. Until some time in the 19th century married women could not own property, and they do so even now by means of a legal fiction that they are unmarried, IIRC.

We also had the Electoral Reform Act or whatever it was called in England in the 1830s. We had Catholic Emancipation and all that in England. The Monument in Newcastle indicates that Earl Grey saved civil peace in England with his Electoral Reform Bill; whatever was going on back then I don't really know, but I'm fairly sure there was no ACTUAL civil war.

In South Africa Apartheid ended. Yes there was external pressure, but IIUC with all that pressure in place it ultimately came down to one man, F W de Klerk, becoming convinced that the system couldn't last forever, and carrying others with him through his personal political power. I'm not saying it could have happened without Mandela, etc. But it was IIUC, and I could be wrong, F W de Klerk whose actions definitively determined that it would happen peacefully, and not through violent confrontation.

Even in Ancient Rome the owner's power to free his slaves was extended through various developments in Roman law over the centures as far as I understand it, and the rights of freedmen of various categories were increased until they were all essentially granted the status of Roman Citizens, or something along those lines. Simply gratuitously murderising your slaves was also prohibited. Yes, Christianity was a big factor in some of the later developments at least IIUC. Ancient Rome seems remote, but really the human factors are the same, or at least similar, even if racism wasn't quite the same issue.

Anyway, who's to say whether the Confederacy would have evolved into something more palatable even if it had won the war. You just can't really hypothesise convincingly about it. It's nothing more than intellectual wanking. Maybe I'm naive but I'd like to believe there's enough generosity of spirit in humanity generally that the Confederacy might well have liberalised on its own in due course, just like some of those other societies.

I guess what it's important to remember is that human nature is very similar across vastly different societies. People in bad societies behave badly; people in nice societies behave nicely. White folks in the Confederacy by and large weren't evil, though they did evil things. They just had a distorted world-view and were de-sensitised to what they were doing. That's not to minimise the black experience in any way - which was, as best as I can imagine it, sordid, dehumanising, belittling, harsh, degrading and psychologically stifling/suffocating. The scary truth is that good people can do that to other good people in bad societies because they can get caught up in this collective sort of madness where it all seems normal, where they lose touch with human empathy with the subjugated class. But some of those good people are bound to open their eyes to what's going on and realise it's not right. It's just a matter of time. And maybe, just maybe, they might grasp the reins of their evil society and turn it around from within. There's plenty of precedents for that, I think. Not saying it's probable. But believably likely? Sure.

At the end of the day it only takes one charismatic individual with a big dose of luck who comes at the right time to turn a whole society around for good or for ill. McCarthy IMHO YMMV turned American society into a ridiculous and sinister anti-Communist witchhunt in the 1950s. Ian Paisley first madly fanned the flames of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in the 1970s or whenever, then was the final decisive force in cementing a pragmatic peace in very recent years. It only takes one man, but it's got to be the right one man - the right alpha male (or female) with the right vision to press the right switch at the time when the switch is open to be pressed. And BTW Gerry Adams is about to be in a position to do the same in Ireland, quite possibly. It's going to be very interesting to watch. I hope to God he shows some human reasonableness if he does get into government there, because he's not going to be in charge of some nicely reined-in province with a civil police force but no army. He could well be in charge of a fully independent country with its own army. Peace in this part of the world possibly depends on him continuing to see the sense in winning the hearts and minds of Northern Ireland and not resorting to new tactics suddenly made available to him by the economic crisis. Of course it's only that sensibleness which has made him electable in the South, so if he's rational, he'll understand that it's continuing sensibleness which will keep him in power and supply him with the best tools to strive for his goals. But he's going to face a crazy temptation, IMHO.

Quote from: Blackhand;425756They would absolutely have NOT abandoned it, and it would probably have extended to immigrants, Native Americans and criminals such as the abolitionists (just after the war).

In the wake of a victorious Confederacy, it's not hard to imagine slavery as a punishment for a variety of criminal infractions.  It might have been this instead of a burgeoning prison system.

Whilst I agree with your other points in time they would have abandoned it. You get to a point where mechanisation is cheaper than feeding and maintaining a popultion of workers even if you don't pay them. So then slavery slides into something approaching a concentration camp which is itself of a limited sustainable duration.
Ultimately Slavery has economic roots racism is a matrix ontop of slavery not its root cause.

Lincoln did not go to war to free the slaves, he went to war to keep the United States from becoming a group of minor countries each of whom individually could have been stomped by Britain or France.  He wanted to preserve the Union.

Now why the South wanted to secede, slavery and the abolition movement was the main reason.

In Deadlands a world-changing event stopped the Civil War.  Once the South and North were no longer fighting, a period of entrenchment and recovery happened.   Expecting Britain and France to aid the South when the war was just about rebellion was one thing, after the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery became a retroactive Casus Belli.  If the South wanted any more help from Britain and France, it had to make the war not about slavery, but making it about rebellion again.  So the South freed the slaves.

The English government has faced near constant civil insurrection since William came to the island. Even the suffragettes were pretty violent (as were the Chartists, Parliamentarians, Levelers and Jacobites). In fact, the abolition of slavery is the only progressive cause I can think of that succeeded in England without a riot or attempted revolution behind it (and there probably was at least one that I'm just unaware of).

Quote from: CRKrueger;425780In Deadlands a world-changing event stopped the Civil War.  Once the South and North were no longer fighting, a period of entrenchment and recovery happened.   Expecting Britain and France to aid the South when the war was just about rebellion was one thing, after the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery became a retroactive Casus Belli.  If the South wanted any more help from Britain and France, it had to make the war not about slavery, but making it about rebellion again.  So the South freed the slaves.

That's kind of dumb alternate history if that's their explanation. For one thing, it would have required an amendment to the CSA's constitution, which had specific provisions in it to prevent any member state or the federal government from abolishing slavery. It also would have gone against the stated reasons for rebellion, and the popular sentiment of most Southerners (even non-slave owners were afraid that free blacks would seek vengeance against them). Even had they freed the slaves, the laws of the Confederacy would have, IIRC, required the government to pay compensation to owners, which would have bankrupted the government (which was never on great financial footing at the best of times).

IRL, the CSA government was well aware that its pro-slavery position was unpopular with Britain and France (not that it prevented those countries from trading with them for most of the war). It bulled through with it anyhow because it was too tightly integrated into the whole system to give up. That system quite literally had to be smashed and burnt to pieces by people like Sherman and Grant to end it.

Quote from: Omnifray;425778Even in Ancient Rome the owner's power to free his slaves was extended through various developments in Roman law over the centures as far as I understand it, and the rights of freedmen of various categories were increased until they were all essentially granted the status of Roman Citizens, or something along those lines. Simply gratuitously murderising your slaves was also prohibited. Yes, Christianity was a big factor in some of the later developments at least IIUC. Ancient Rome seems remote, but really the human factors are the same, or at least similar, even if racism wasn't quite the same issue.

That went the other way, too. Into the late Roman Imperium, tenant farmers and sharecroppers were increasingly legally tied to the land they worked and functionally enslaved (or perhaps "enserfed" might be the better term). Over the course of generations, they saw a slow degradation of their freedoms and legal protections.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;425782That's kind of dumb alternate history if that's their explanation. For one thing, it would have required an amendment to the CSA's constitution,

Sorry, but you are playing a game that assumes there are zombie cowboys and steampunk robots powred by magical rocks and you have a problem with constitutional changes?

Deadlands isn't an alternative history in the way "What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo or Justinian had reunited the Western Empire with the Eastern." Deadlands is comicbook pulp, just a bit of fun. It doesn't really merit overthinking... or any thinking at all.

Quote from: jibbajibba;425779Whilst I agree with your other points in time they would have abandoned it. You get to a point where mechanisation is cheaper than feeding and maintaining a popultion of workers even if you don't pay them. So then slavery slides into something approaching a concentration camp which is itself of a limited sustainable duration.
Ultimately Slavery has economic roots racism is a matrix ontop of slavery not its root cause.

He asked about what would happen in 20 or 30 years.

I agree totally with what you're saying, but this might not have happened until well into the 20th century.  I could see another (at least) half a century of slavery, depending on what events you choose to include in the alternate timeline.

Quote from: Soylent Green;425788Sorry, but you are playing a game that assumes there are zombie cowboys and steampunk robots powred by magical rocks and you have a problem with constitutional changes?

Deadlands isn't an alternative history in the way "What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo or Justinian had reunited the Western Empire with the Eastern." Deadlands is comicbook pulp, just a bit of fun. It doesn't really merit overthinking... or any thinking at all.

I don't play Deadlands at all because I find it absurd and uninteresting.

But yes, I do prefer designers to understand a historical period well if they want to use it as a point of departure. The guys who write for Clockwork and Chivalry, for example, have an excellent understanding of the period that makes it easier to swallow the alternate history and metaphysics they introduce.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;425792The guys who write for Clockwork and Chivalry, for example, have an excellent understanding of the period that makes it easier to swallow the alternate history and metaphysics they introduce.

Do they? I haven't checked it out yet.

Quote from: danbuter;425745And go fuck yourself. Or do you forget how many Northerners were more than happy to lynch blacks?
And amazingly enough, your points 1 and 2 are the same ones I am making. Guess you took the short bus to school.

Yes northerners treatment of African Americans was terrible. But it also shows your ignorance of the matter. Catholics, the Irish, and Eastern Europeans were all also on the short end of the northern stick as well. (See Know-Nothings)

What northerners resented was Slave Power. They viewed the south as being run by a bunch of rich arrogant plantation owners who had an unfair advantage because of the 3/5th representation for slaves rule. Time and time again their issues were not resolved because the slave states acted as a bloc to defeat them especially when if you counted only those who could be citizens the North would not issues.

The Dred Scott decision and the Fugitive Slave laws was the straw that broke the northern camel back. Now not only the south was frustrating the north's agenda they were imposing their own agenda on the north. The wake of Dred Scott saw many Northern states calling for states rights and succession. But since they had population on their side what resulted was the Republican party and Lincoln's victory.

Prior to Dred Scott the northerners viewed abolitionists as radicals and an obstruction to peaceful compromise with the south. Afterwards the North felt it had no choice to use all of it's political advantages to prevent Slave Power from dominating the nation. It made common cause with the abolitionists which resulted in the Republican party.

All of these issues would not existed without slavery being the heart of southern society. The myth of States Rights, the Lost Cause and the noble cavaliers of the South  are the result of the Redemption movement that occurred when Reconstruction ended.  And while there are some elements of truths in each of these they are basically myths.

Quote from: danbuter;425731Sorry, but you have no idea what you're talking about. Slavery was not the major issue. And there weren't that many abolitionists signing up to fight. A couple thousand people, at most, in a war with a million troops on each side. The massacres in Kansas didn't mean crap in the war. They were just some cool headlines. Militarily, they were wingnuts fighting each other.

They wrote slavery, and particularly the slavery of blacks, into their Constitution as a right:

"No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."

"The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired."

"No slave or other person held to service or labor in any State or Territory of the Confederate States, under the laws thereof, escaping or lawfully carried into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such slave belongs; or to whom such service or labor may be due."

"The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States, lying without the limits of the several Sates; and may permit them, at such times, and in such manner as it may by law provide, to form States to be admitted into the Confederacy. In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States."

I'm sorry but the neo-Confederate argument that the states had the right to secede and that the Civil War wasn't about slavery (there is often something about Lincoln being the Anti-Christ in there somewhere) just don't hold up to or shoot down the ample evidence to the contrary.  

Concerning secession and whether the Founders would have supported it, see Article IV, Section 3 and Article VI of the US Contitution as well as other clauses (Article III, Section 3 and the provision for the suspension of habeas corpus in times of rebellion).  The precursor (and generally considered weaker) Articles of Confederation repeatedly refers to a "perpetual Union" and, in Article VI, specifically describe what states can't do, including "No two or more States shall enter into any treaty, confederation or alliance whatever between them, without the consent of the united States in congress assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be entered into, and how long it shall continue."  

It's pretty clear that the Founders didn't think there was a right to check out of the United States once a state was in it, at least not without the approval of Congress.

As for the war not being about Slavery, do a search for "slave" in any of the declarations of secession by various states such as these.

Yes, I'm sure that many individuals fought on the side of the Confederacy for other reasons, perhaps even noble reasons, and there were other problems such as trade issues that played a role, but slavery had loomed large as a problem going back to the Constitution and the 3/5ths Compromise.  In many ways, the Civil War was the poison pill of the 3/5ths Compromise, which was designed to limit the political power of slave states and lead to the eventual end of slavery, playing out its end game.

IMNSHO I don't care if it was about slavery or not - what it ended UP being about was the ability of supposedly soverign states who voluentarily entered into a Union not being able to leave said Union if they wanted to.

Name another organization that once you join, you can't EVER leave, and if you try people with guns will force you to stay.

It is fairly well established (and mentioned earlier) that Lincoln didn't give a fig about the slaves, but you can't bring that up without being considered at best a closet racist. So carry on, I suppose.