What would have happened if America had split up because of the civil war?

Answer 1

It is interesting to speculate about alternative history, but we really have no way of knowing what would have happened. The world is very complicated and millions of people are busy making their own unpredictable decisions with unpredictable results. Perhaps the division of America into two countries would have prevented the entry of America into WW I, either because neither the Union nor the Confederacy would have considered itself to be powerful enough to enter into a European war, or possibly out of fear that the two American nations would have wound up on opposite sides, leading to pointless bloodshed. The failure of America to enter WW I on the side of the Triple Entente could have resulted in a very different outcome, in which the Central Powers and their ally the Ottoman Empire survived, instead of being broken up into smaller countries, and perhaps the Bolshevik Revolution would also have been avoided since it arose largely out of the prolonged fighting of WW I. All world events would have gone in a different direction, and the world today would probably be unrecognizable. It is also difficult to say how long slavery would have persisted in the Confederacy; perhaps there would still be slaves in the south to this day, in the year 2011. Only now, they would be valued chiefly as a source of spare organs for transplants, forming the basis of a lucrative global market. At least, that is one possibility.