They would have gone back to the work they had before the war.

And quite honestly, Slavery was losing its usefulness economically. The north was already out stripping the south economically speaking. The industrial revolution was just around the corner and the south would have needed to move towards a robust textile industry, and they weren't going to achieve that with slave labors and its associated costs. Slavery was moving west because it is only useful for a slice of agriculture. After that it becomes less and less cost effective.

There is little doubt, had the Confederacy won it's freedom, slaves would have continued to be used in manufacturing. As an example, Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond use slaves for 50% of it's works force in 1860. The slaves were not only used for general labor but were skilled craftsmen such as pattern makers, molders, machinists and mill wrights. How long that practice would have continued, is subject to discussion. As long as cotton was profitable and no machinery was available to plant, tend or harvest the crop, slavery would have probably continued. It would have continued to be used in manufacturing as long as the manufacturing operation could employ the slaves and make a profit doing so. Once it became unprofitable to use slave labor, the practice would have die out.

Frederick Douglass reported, in his autobiography, how his owners hired him out into various skilled-labor day jobs; of course, they pocketed his wages. The writer of Twelve Years a Slave (his name escapes me, and I can't find that book right now) reported the same thing. They both reported that being in charge of slaves usually had a bad effect on the character of white people since screaming and beating and irresponsibility and callous indifference were encouraged by the system. They both witnessed, over time, some white people who seemed pretty nice when they arrived in a slavery state but then degenerated morally over time. They saw vicious white people pressuring nice ones to be mean. On his first day of free work in New England, Frederick Douglass was astounded by the calm, cheerful, orderly atmosphere of the workplace, as well as the resulting speed and efficiency.

The slave system really did not work very well for the industrial age. I believe Lincoln's Secretary of State William Seward wrote about his travels between the north and the south, after the few northern slaveholders had been forced to give up slavery. He said it was immediately obvious when he crossed the border into a slavery state, with noticeably poorer conditions of the roads, bridges, homes, barns, and other buildings. Most of the people, both white and black, seemed sad and discouraged to him.

I read a book, years ago, that was written by a northern Methodist minister after traveling in the antebellum south on behalf of theMethodist Church, with pre-arranged visits to plantations. He said he was usually so heartbroken by the physical condition of the enslaved household staff that he could hardly swallow any dinner, so that he lost a lot of weight on the trip. He said that he saw many enslaved people everywhere who were starved, sickly, emaciated, discouraged, some with horrible injuries, obviously driving themselves heroically to finish their appointed work. He also mentioned that the poor whites who did not own slaves were also starved, sickly, emaciated, and discouraged, obviously also downtrodden and locked out of the prosperity enjoyed by the slaveowners. It was shocking to him how the prosperous white southerners were cheerfully oblivious to all the suffering around them.

There is a book called The Political Economy of Slavery which details how the rich planters in the south were warping the economic system around them with their obtuse arrogance (which made them waste huge amounts of time throwing vicious temper tantrums instead of working at reasonable management), their perverted banking system draconian even by 18th century standards ( so they could keep their social inferiors locked out of the marketplace), their lazy disinclination to do any real work (so that they did not know how to properly organize or oversee any work projects ), their contemptuous habit of ordering shoddy tools and equipment instead of good-quality tools and equipment (so that the poor workers both slave and free had to spend much more time repairing broken tools and equipment and making up for ruined crops and buildings and livestock). The book comments that the slavery system actually had a bad effect on the US economy in general.

Removing the moral component from discussions of slavery is beneath contempt. As it was in 1918. As it was in 1818. As it was in 1718. Making more efficient use of human chattel is still the use of humans as chattel. If anybody tries to persuade you otherwise, find new people to associate with.

IG Farben Company and Krupp Company and other wealthy German industrialists actually helped Hitler get into power, thinking he would be a useful tool for them. They thought he and Mussolini and other fascists would help them counter the rising threat to their power from the socialists and communists, that Hitler would make the workers more disciplined and orderly and industrious. When Hitler started rounding up Jews and Gypsies and others, these industrialists eagerly accepted the offer of thousands of slave workers for their mines and factories. Many poor people were worked to death or used in fiendish deadly experiments. It is not known exactly how much the wealthy industrialists understood about the full horror of Hitler's intentions. Of course, there were those, like that guy Schindler, who managed to turn the tables on the fascists and actually rescue a lot of people by pretending to enslave them.

Go back to the original colonies. Virginia and the Carolinas the rich folks git land and with slave labor became richer, and expanded their land holdings at the expense of poor whites. Georgia was set up not to allow slavery because Oglethorpe didn't want the rich to get everything, bit soon the Georgia colonists over turned that because they saw what was happening in Virginia and Carolina's and wanted that wealth. During and after the revolutionary war it was poor whites who went through Cumberland gap to Tennessee and Kentucky. They had nothing to lose in old colonies. Those first settlers became ancestors of Appalachian folks and settlers after them passed to the middle Tennessee and with LA purchase, Al. Miss. And La. Rich got richer and poor got poorer on backs of slaves. Is why most east Tennessee tried motto leave with rebels and why west VA did not. The poor whites knew that the rich planters using slavery was bad for them.

I'm not saying this well but historians make a better case for it. Look at Nancy Isenberg s book White Trash.

"Slave young, Slave long", and my great-grandmother was a former slave that helped raise my father and his siblings.

The reference as I understood it, meant, that if you were a slave at a young age - the concept of freedom from slavery was harder to understand, thus being young (or born into slavery) the indoctrination to slavery was totals. Yet, even with this indoctrination - there are so many cases of slaves fighting for their freedom and choosing to die rather than live their lives as slaves.

I wonder, if the South had won the war - how many people of the south would have died and continued to die - maintaining that state of affairs. Maybe the first modern holocaust would have occurred here in America, because I suspect that they would have to kill hundreds of thousands to maintain the state. The reason is knowledge of the world, education, exposure to the concept of freedom - to maintain the state you must maintain a state of ignorance, and it is a two way street.

I guess it sorts of like today with the police killing so many people of color, at what point does enough become enough.

my thoughts.

Because why legalize slavery when you can pay your expendable workers peanuts, keep them drowning in debt they'll never pay back, make the rent so high nobody can afford housing, and give them extremely miserable working conditions?