What do you know about the Civil War? Everyone knows the familiar images: soldiers in Union blue versus troops in Confederate gray, the Emancipation Proclama...
Interesting hypothetical, but the socialist energy you refer to is an outcome of the US's massive industrialization as a result of the war, and the growing numbers of proletariat due to the winding down of Western settler expansion. I think it would be unlikely that the US could hold together as one nation for another few decades given the contradictions around free and slave labor in the Western territories.
I like to speculate what would have happened if the UK/France tried to intervene--might have been a US/Russia alliance ~80 years ahead of schedule :o
So I'm still thinking of a world where Lincoln became president but just never challenged slavery. Lincoln did a ton of stuff around railroads and deeply pro industrialisation stuff outside of the broader civil war effort.
Like if land reform had still happened out into the western states which represented a big part of why capitalism was so successful in the US when compared to other countries over the long term, but I don't think it was nearly as meaningful in a short term sense against socialism.
Interesting hypothetical, but the socialist energy you refer to is an outcome of the US's massive industrialization as a result of the war, and the growing numbers of proletariat due to the winding down of Western settler expansion. I think it would be unlikely that the US could hold together as one nation for another few decades given the contradictions around free and slave labor in the Western territories.
I like to speculate what would have happened if the UK/France tried to intervene--might have been a US/Russia alliance ~80 years ahead of schedule :o
So I'm still thinking of a world where Lincoln became president but just never challenged slavery. Lincoln did a ton of stuff around railroads and deeply pro industrialisation stuff outside of the broader civil war effort.
Like if land reform had still happened out into the western states which represented a big part of why capitalism was so successful in the US when compared to other countries over the long term, but I don't think it was nearly as meaningful in a short term sense against socialism.