US loses the Civil War?

[afleitch]

The USA would not have lost the District of Columbia, though the seat of government may have moved away from there eventually. Maryland would have been cannibalised and carved up, ensuring CSA domination of the Chesapeake and the Delaware, also sounding the deathknell of Philadelphia (for which the CSA would have charged the USA a fortune access) New York as the only viable port would have grown even faster post war and become an unweildy metropolitan behemoth.

I can see DC being abandoned, but the dream still lives on. I can see a planned inland capital being built west of the Mississippi (Which on another note would be essentially closed to traffic perhaps in Nebraska.

There is no war with Spain with either the USA or CSA. Both Spain and the CSA would bustle for political and economic influence in Latin America.

[afleitch]

The problem for the CSA as it entered the early 20th Century would have been Virginia, the centre of both military and economic power. A rapid industrialisation would have sucked workers from the rural South. Slaves too. That would damage the economy and hurt landowners.

Virginia would also be the centre of 'the modern thinking' and sympathetic calls for the end of slavery would likely be voiced by liberal thinkers. This, combined with white labourers and black slaves finding something in common afterall in their working and housing conditions would see slaves sowing seeds not of cotton or grain, but of socialism.

[afleitch]

Virginia was already leading the way in abolishing slavery.

Exactly. And would have become the political, economic and cultural powerhouse of the Confederacy and would have become increasingly distant from the rest of the Confederacy. With the west of the state providing coal, the coast being a mix of miltary policing, tariff controls against Union ports (and the USA finding innovate ways to avoid this) and booming in industry in it's own rights by the 1920's you have a potential powderkeg; A coalminer and a slave labourer would find common ground against distant and irrelevant estate owners and the Richmond intellegista and government machine. Poor housing, low pay, few rights. You would have a viable Labour and emancipation movement similar to Europe.

[afleitch]

P.S This would make an interesting game Two competing nations and industrialisation yadda yadda