Would slavery have ended without the Civil War? (Mexico, empire, Japanese)

[Irishtom29]

Originally Posted by Rush71

what a load of crap. What have the democrats done for the black community?

Did I defend the modern Democrats? They are often as bad in their knee scraping to conservative business interests as the Republicans.

But to answer your question it was Democrats who led in the busting of Jim Crow and organizing Blacks into labor unions. And the Democratic Party in northern cities allowed Blacks the vote and political power.

In any event Blacks have been hurt more than Whites by the loss of jobs to low wage countries, I can't see how any reasonable person can deny that. And the businessmen who did that were overwhelmingly conservatives, not many liberals run manufacturing businesses.

Now as for what the Republicans did for Blacks, well they led the way in destroying slavery and trying to advance the Freedmen during Reconstruction. But it seems you don't approve of those policies.

[ovcatto]

Originally Posted by Irishtom29

Them damn unions. The only thing worse than an uppity Black is an uppity worker. Why can't they just bow and scrape, hat in hand, and do as their betters instruct? Damn Bolsheviks.

Essentially.

How many times have we debated the cause of the Civil War on this forum and how many time have we posted original source material in support of our arguments and how many times have those arguments been addressed by out revisionist friends... never. Perhaps I would be more patient but I feel like we are on this never ending merry-go-round were we are forced to reargue and reargue the same points ad nauseam, only to have to turn around and rehash the same tired charges, accusations, and strawman arguments. It is truly tiresome. I would abandon the effort if I thought that others, less informed, could be some how inoculated by this nonsense.

My new status quotation:

It isn't politically correct. Just correct.

[Linda_d]

Originally Posted by cpg35223

Sure it would have. For slavery was actually becoming unprofitable. Given the increase in mechanization in agriculture, we would have reached a point where slaves would have been standing around with nothing to do.

Farmers in the Midwest and East were using tractors as early as the 1920s on farms that were growing in size while Southern agriculture remained dependent on share-croppers using mules until after WW II. What forced mechanization on southern was the migration of millions of African Americans off the land and into the cities of the Northeast, Midwest, and West, which raised the cost of labor.

The only reason that blacks could leave the South was because they weren't slaves. If they had been enslaved, they couldn't have left. Since slaves weren't paid wages, there would have been no impetus to mechanize.

Originally Posted by 2nd trick op

Slavery would have been short-lived whethere the Civil War was fought or not; it was on the wane everywhere in the civilized world and ironically, the last vestiges of the "legitimized" slave trade were bertween East Africa and the Sheikdoms of the Persian Gulf. Anti-slavery societies flourished in Great Britain simultaneously with the push for the expansion of Parliamentary Democracy, and enlightened movements such as this always found an audience on the other side of the Atlanic.

So slavery would have died out, admittedly later than just about everywhere else, regardless. But the need for labor to hold down the lowest positions in the pecking order would have not. And in 1870, whether in the North or South. the overwhelming majority of this drudgery was still perfomed on small subsistence farms, by family members, in return for security and the basics, rather than monetary compensation.

Most of what I see in this thread is the same old whine by recently-overeducated young people who, like all the rest of us, have yet to come to grips with the fact that most existence after college is dull and repetitive, and that most people who were prpeared to be chiefs will have to learn to be braves, at least until such time as it's too late in the game to matter; Sic Transit Gloria!

This post is mostly a lot of blather by somebody who is not nearly as knowledgeable about American history and society as he/she thinks he/she is.

Originally Posted by jackmccullough

I have absolutely no patience with this argument.

It is impossible to know when or if slavery would have been eliminated without the Civil War. It seems unlikely, given that the slave-owning states were willing to commit treason and take up arms against the country in order to preserve it, but I don't claim to know for a fact that it would not have ended eventually.

What I find abhorrent, though, is the view implicit in this claim that it would have been morally justified to force the millions of enslaved people already living under slavery, and untold numbers of generations who would have followed them, to continue to suffer under slavery until their owners found it convenient to free them.

Slavery was an unmitigated evil, and the Confederate apologists who argue that the slaves should have been happy to wait for its end have a grotesquely twisted sense of morality.

I would add it's especially abhorrent when the revisionists and apologists constantly flap their traps about "freedom".

Originally Posted by NCN

Yes. Slavery would have been voted out in a peaceful manner if it had not been pushed down the throats of those who owned slaves. Totally an unnecessary war of Northern Aggression.

And more black people would be working today if people had not been forced to hire them. Only hiring the number of blacks you have to is a backlash.

See above.

Originally Posted by Listener2307

Yeah. That was the thought about slavery.

But, was it all necessary? Maybe not. Maybe it was possible to go slower, and find a way for southern farmers to operate profitably without having to use slaves. When you look at it, it seems to me that the southern plantation owner was held hostage by the system he helped create. Many men, including Thomas Jefferson, didn't want to own slaves. They had to, to be competitive.

So the southerner was beaten into submission. And as a result he persecuted black people for another 100 years.

Those are excuses. The Southerners rebelled because they lost an election. They rejected efforts to compromise presented both by the Buchanan administration and by various members of Congress before Lincoln even took office. They seized US property. They fired on US installions.

The Confederates wanted war, and they got it. All the whining about the poor wronged South is bull manure. They could have gotten much worse. Treason was a hanging offense in the 1860s, and almost all the Confederate officials and military leaders had committed treason by firing on the flag that they had all sworn allegiance to as soldiers and public officials. It was the price that John Brown and his cohorts paid in 1959.

FYI:Where's the proof that Thomas Jefferson didn't want to be a slave owner? If he didn't want slaves, he could have freed them because it was still legal in VA to do that, but he chose not to do so. The only slave he freed was Sally Hemmings' son, who was in all likelihood, his own son since she was his mistress for years.

If Jefferson had freed his slaves, he'd have sunk to the level of "yeoman farmer", and wouldn't have had the money or time to yap about freedom and equality or build Monticello or glorify the "yeoman farmer" that he didn't want to be. He was the first great hypocritical politician in American history.

George Washington, in contrast, freed all of the slaves that he owned at his death. The ownership of the Mount Vernon slaves was complex because Washington became a major slave owner by his marriage to Martha Custis, a widow with 2 children. Martha and her children all owned slaves from the estate of her late husband. Martha's slaves (and their future descendents through the female line) became George Washington's on their marriage. These were the slaves that Washington freed, much to the anger and dismay of other Washington relatives.

Originally Posted by jasper12

There were mean, sociopaths, who viewed ownership of humans as an entitlement of being white, and wealthy. Those types would have never bowed to voluntary release of slaves. Hold out states, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, which relied on slave labor for the economy, would have never changed, it would have continued to be a States Rights issue, and needed to be forced.

I think, economically, slavery was becoming obsolete, and would have ended, but there were always those who would have never parted with the power and control of owning a slave.

Change of opinion after considering this issue...

On states rights, Utah wanted polygamy to be a states rights issue, and this was shut down as well. Another form of slavery, still practiced illegally in Utah. And just as insidious. As it preys on the most powerless, young women, given a "choice", marry an old man as his fifth wife, or, be this other guy's wife...which is no choice.

That's the crux of the issue: the social control aspect of slavery. That's what Southerners would have never given up. The British had a successful working model for freeing slaves without violence or economic dislocation because they had done it in their American colonies beginning in the 1830s but it was never discussed in the South. Never.

Originally Posted by Irishtom29

Yeah, many people have trouble understanding that disconnection between goals. But as the war against the rebellion went on the Federals realized that destroying slavery went hand in hand with destroying the rebellion. "Never again" to borrow a phrase. You know.

Union troops became radicalized, much as Lincoln himself was, as the war continued. Part of it was the idea of destroying slavery as a war aim, but also many were appalled when they saw the conditions blacks endured on the plantations in the Deep South.

Originally Posted by thriftylefty

Excess Slaves could be hired out to northern industries which was the case of Frederick Douglas at one time. (Ulrich?) Phillips is another historian (and racist) who doubted that slavery was profitable. He believed it to be economically inefficient moderately profitable to individual slave holder and destructive to the southern economy. I will concede that the general consensus is that slavery is profitable, far be it from me to doubt Stampp. Slavery was profitable not due to the plantation system but due to the artificially high price of slaves. Slavery didn’t really exist in the open market. Slave owners /lawmakers could regulate its profitability with laws like the fugitive act. Was slavery a true economic system or a social system that allowed ower class and upper class people to live together past the point that plantations were profitable?

Again, I think that understanding slavery in the US as a social system first is the only way to understand why Southerners wouldn't even consider gradual emancipation similar to the British model, which had been successful. The British, especially those in Britain, viewed slavery as an economic system with some loathsome characteristics, so they were able to fashion a means of freeing the slaves without violence and without too much economic consequences to slave owners.

In the North, slavery had been legal but never widespread. It didn't weave itself into society's fabric. It didn't define/determine who was wealthy or middle class or poor as it did in the South. That's why all the Northern states found it easy to abolish slavery fairly early in their histories.

The South was also moving in the direction of emancipation until the cotton boom. The invention of the cotton gin coincided with the opening of the vast cotton lands in Alabama, Mississippi, and western Tennessee plus the settlement of upstate South Carolina, northern and western Georgia, etc.. In the Upper South (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina), small time planters migrated west with their slaves and became big time planters. Some planters who chose to stay, made more profit selling excess slaves to the Deep South than in growing tobacco.

Ownership of slaves became a badge of wealth and most of the South's wealth was tied up in slaves and in land. Wealthy Southerners idealized the landed aristocracy of Britain, and shunned most commercial enterprises, although many of them had made their fortunes originally as slave traders. Middle class people might have 1 or 2 slaves, and frequently owners and slaves worked side by side. Frequently people living in towns in the Upper South, especially widows, would hire out their slaves to work in the factories. Poorer people, of course, wouldn't have any slaves.

In some areas of the South, especially in western North Carolina, East Tennessee, and western Virginia (what is now West Virginia), there were few slave holders. These same areas were also strongly Unionist. In the Border States (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri) where slavery was less common than further South, support for the Confederacy was much less, too, and none of these states seceded.

[Irishtom29]

Originally Posted by ovcatto

Essentially.

How many times have we debated the cause of the Civil War on this forum and how many time have we posted original source material in support of our arguments and how many times have those arguments been addressed by out revisionist friends... never. Perhaps I would be more patient but I feel like we are on this never ending merry-go-round were we are forced to reargue and reargue the same points ad nauseam, only to have to turn around and rehash the same tired charges, accusations, and strawman arguments. It is truly tiresome. I would abandon the effort if I thought that others, less informed, could be some how inoculated by this nonsense.

My new status quotation:

It isn't politically correct. Just correct.

I no longer come here very often because of the screwballs, people like these get short shrift on serious history forums. But it's entertaining to provoke them and expose their...whatever. Childish perhaps but diverting.

With that Parthian shot I take my leave of this thread. The sensible need no convincing and the senseless can't be convinced.

[Rush71]

Originally Posted by Irishtom29

Did I defend the modern Democrats? They are often as bad in their knee scraping to conservative business interests as the Republicans.

But to answer your question it was Democrats who led in the busting of Jim Crow and organizing Blacks into labor unions. And the Democratic Party in northern cities allowed Blacks the vote and political power.

In any event Blacks have been hurt more than Whites by the loss of jobs to low wage countries, I can't see how any reasonable person can deny that. And the businessmen who did that were overwhelmingly conservatives, not many liberals run manufacturing businesses.

Now as for what the Republicans did for Blacks, well they led the way in destroying slavery and trying to advance the Freedmen during Reconstruction. But it seems you don't approve of those policies.

it was democrats who led in the busting of Jim Crow? LMAO.....what democrats busted their own system they implemented? what do you want to give them a cookie for that?

Democrats organized blacks to join and pay fees to corrupt labor unions? how did that work out at the end in the inner cities of Michigan and Ohio?


so you are another one that think that Lincoln sent troops to the south to destroy slavery and that all blacks were as equals as whites?

[sean1the1]

Originally Posted by Rush71

The Africans were living just fine in their villages????.....who is the ignorant here? ...you obvious don't have no idea what was life for most Africans in their country in those times or even now. Im talking about the majority.


there are far worse things than slavery......like extreme poverty and slow death of starvation and disease and wars.

but then again look at the results, We have a Black President, many blacks millionaires and others doing really well in our country, better than any country in the world. Would that been possible if their ancestors would have stayed in Africa?


is the glass half full of half empty?


Do blacks have it better in the U.S. or Africa?..........you think slavery is worse than starvation, disease and ethic cleansing wars?.....please take your high moral superiority b.s. someplace else!

Please enlighten me then. If you live in a culture that is more about survival then Material things then it wouldn't matter.

[Rush71]

Originally Posted by sean1the1

Please enlighten me then. If you live in a culture that is more about survival then Material things then it wouldn't matter.

well put you under those conditions and you let us know.

[Futurist110]

Originally Posted by CookieSkoon

In my opinion it would have died due to every other "civilized" nation having already abolished it at the very least.

^

This. Eventually much greater industrialization in the Southern U.S. would have greatly reduced the need for slavery, thus gradually leading to its abolition everywhere there.

[Listener2307]

Originally Posted by Linda_d

............FYI:Where's the proof that Thomas Jefferson didn't want to be a slave owner?

I've never seen proof. But the point I was making is that freedom happened. Slavery, in Jefferson's estate, died slowly with nary a shot fired. Maybe a lesson is in there.
Perhaps, and I am only saying "perhaps", some time in the future we may want to consider that both Washington and Jefferson ended slavery peacefully in their own way. Slavery is gone, of course. I am only suggesting that there may be another sticky issue and we may be wise to use what we have learned from the Civil War and the two founding fathers mentioned. Just as we may want to consider John Adam's example........

Originally Posted by Linda_d

The South was also moving in the direction of emancipation until the cotton boom.....................

I had never heard that. Several people in this thread have said that they believe slavery would have simply outlived its usefulness. I think so, too.

[andywire]

Originally Posted by Irishtom29

I thinks Blacks have been held back by conservative businessmen who shipped millions of good paying blue collar jobs to low wage countries just as Blacks were positioned to step into them. Unfortunate timing.

With all due respect, the consumer had a large hand at that. They were asked to look for the union label, which translated into decent paying, middle class jobs. This plea was ignored. Every item on every store's shelf receives a label stating the country of origin. I have never witnessed an American taking a peek before making their purchase.

Nobody would love more than I to see good paying, blue collar jobs come back en mass. Knowing the attention span and ability to reason of the average American though, that won't happen (at least not due to consumer sentiment).

Originally Posted by Irishtom29

I know some of the northern states once had slavery, Andy. But it never existed in the Old Northwest (Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota) it was prohibited by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

Slavery did exist in at least some of these states. The ordinance you are referring halted the expansion of the practice, but it did not affect current slave holders.

Slavery in Illinois before the Civil War

A quick search brought up some info on slavery in Illinois. What's funny is nobody mentions the native Americans who were held as slaves

Originally Posted by Rush71

what a load of crap. What have the democrats done for the black community?

Democrat party = Modern day plantation. The African American community must band together to start looking out for their own collective interests. What they fail to realize is, the more certain the politician is of your vote, the less they actually have to do for you. But these are matters of politics.