Over this past weekend, I went to see Gone With The Wind with my girlfriend. I had never seen it, and she has seen it multiple times. Her family is from the South, while I am from the Northeast, though currently we live in the Pacific Northwest. We often get into discussions about Southern culture versus the rest of the country, and occasionally Gone With The Wind comes up. It's her mother's favorite movie, and something her mother points to it as an example of the beauty and "honor" of the old Southern way of life. I don't believe her mother is racist or pro-slavery in any way. She's actually quite knowledgeable about Southern and Civil War history; much more so than I. However, I do believe she is sincerely confused about the South and its place in the history of the United States.
My girlfriend and I left the movie and got into another discussion about Southern culture and history, and it made me wonder if anyone in the Union government considered what the country would be like without the South as a part of it. Would they try to form trade relations? Would they attempt to replace the agrarian economy by developing the Western territories differently? Was it really such a tremendous blow to lose the cotton and tobacco industries that they couldn't be compensated for some other way?
I've searched this subreddit a bit, but didn't really find the kind of answers I was looking for, so I would appreciate any help from you fine folks, even if it's just a book to read further on the topic.
Thank you.
Well first of all "Gone With the Wind" is essentially a romance novel/movie to an image of the Old South, an Old South that did not really exist. It completely robs slaves and freedmen of any agency they had. The movie also completely glosses over the Klan.
Economically the South was backwards to the rest of the country. The plantation system was anti-capitalist and in a way quasi-socialist. The rest of the country was beginning to implement the free labor ideology, which was a big part of why the Republicans were "Free Soil." They believed that slave labor led to whites being lazy. Numerous contemporary travelers, European and American, remarked on how lazy the average Southerner was. Once a job was considered to be slave labor it was "unfit" for whites to perform. The South did not heavily invest capital in modern industry and the railroad, unlike what was going on in the North.
I don't think the loss of cotton would have been devastating to the Union, since the government had been willing to risk that when it enacted a protective tariff in the late 1820s/early 1830s. (This lead to the nullification crisis.)
If the South had somehow managed to gain independence there may have been some trade established between the two sections. However, depending on the specifics of the Civil War, I think another war may have been likely. The plantation system needed new land for it to remain profitable (which is one of the main causes of the war.) The South would have come into conflict with Spain over Cuba, Mexico, Central American nations, or even the United States again.
I do not believe the Western territories would have required development different than what actually happened. After the war the South was completely devastated. Even before the war its not like the South was the nation's breadbasket.
And to answer your title question, I do not think that the Union had drawn up a "Plan B." If that was discussed then it is most likely buried in someone's personal letters or unpublished memoirs. There were some in the North who thought that confederacy was legitimate or should be left alone but that was not widely believed.
I hope that helps
I would examine platform of George McLellan, who in the 1864 election was possibly willing to examine a negotiated peace with the Confederacy. I would think he would have some plan for diplomacy. Examining economics, the textile industry of the northeast would pressure the government of the Union to come to some trade agreement with the South over cotton trade, in order to push the British out.