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I was wondering because what if the civil war had never happened? How long would slavery had lasted? What would have been the slaves' options for gaining freedom?
There were probably not going to be any additional slave states joining the Union and the slave states' ability to stave off abolitionist legislation in Congress would have diminished. The border slave states, like Missouri, were seeing some anti-slavery immigration from Europe and the eastern states and the peculiar institution was becoming more peculiar. The previous abolition models might be Great Britain and some of the northern states where slavery was phased out over time and that might have taken place in the late 1800s.
Even without the Civil War the Republican Party was gaining strength and Lincoln's election triggered the secession frenzy. If the south had simply decided to wait it out (Lincoln was on the fence regarding abolition) the GOP would have likely backed anti-slavery efforts in congress and repeal of the pro-slavery laws during the coming years.
The problem was that there was no plan B for slavery. What would be done to remedy the huge economic impact of abolition for the former slave owners? That would take years to resolve. The assimilation of millions of poor freed slaves and the public responsibility for educating, housing, and feeding the ex-slaves and providing land was a major problem. Questions of citizenship and voting would need to be addressed. There would be a lot of foot dragging, state by state and in Congress. It probably would have ended up being a more ugly and chaotic process than what took place during Civil War reconstruction. Remember, Indians were not granted citizenship until 1924 and some states did not grant voting rights to Indians until the 1960s.
... Slavery had the potential to last a really long time without the civil war.
Plantation slavery was one thing, and other forms of involuntary servitude another. If not for the plantations, the Civil War likely wouldn't have happened.
A tidbit about the bantoid conquistadors & a hint in their role enabling the bio & cultural genocide of asmari aboriginals like the Twa & Saab or Khoisan peoples of interior (i.e. outside of the coastal areas of Africa south of the Sahara).
There were probably not going to be any additional slave states joining the Union and the slave states' ability to stave off abolitionist legislation in Congress would have diminished. The border slave states, like Missouri, were seeing some anti-slavery immigration from Europe and the eastern states and the peculiar institution was becoming more peculiar. The previous abolition models might be Great Britain and some of the northern states where slavery was phased out over time and that might have taken place in the late 1800s.
Even without the Civil War the Republican Party was gaining strength and Lincoln's election triggered the secession frenzy. If the south had simply decided to wait it out (Lincoln was on the fence regarding abolition) the GOP would have likely backed anti-slavery efforts in congress and repeal of the pro-slavery laws during the coming years.
The problem was that there was no plan B for slavery. What would be done to remedy the huge economic impact of abolition for the former slave owners? That would take years to resolve. The assimilation of millions of poor freed slaves and the public responsibility for educating, housing, and feeding the ex-slaves and providing land was a major problem. Questions of citizenship and voting would need to be addressed. There would be a lot of foot dragging, state by state and in Congress. It probably would have ended up being a more ugly and chaotic process than what took place during Civil War reconstruction. Remember, Indians were not granted citizenship until 1924 and some states did not grant voting rights to Indians until the 1960s.
I have read and thought about the Civil War and its context extensively, perhaps too extensively. I've concluded that the Civil War happened at a moment when it was the only time the Civil War could have happened. It couldn't have happened earlier, nor could have it happened later.
While the handwriting was on the wall that there would be no more slave states (probably), it was enough to spook the South into secession because they feared the loss of the balance of power in the Senate as a bulwark defending slavery, Lincoln had also adamantly campaigned on not touching slavery where it already existed. Lincoln's reasoning was quite simple despite abhorring slavery - not only the national understanding of the US Constitution in 1860 seemed to strongly imply *existing* states had the right to continue legal slavery, there was also no real mechanism for any kind of large scale abolitionism without compensation. When the British abolished slavery in the empire, they did so with compensation. The US federal budget was >100 million while the cumulate value of slaves was in the billions, assuming the South was even willing to accept emancipation for compensation (I'd think only Virginia and North Carolina would have warmed up to the idea).
The hysteria in the South in 1860 was extraordinary. Lincoln was banned from the ballot box in most Southern states. It was impossible to vote for him if you were so inclined! The hysteria was surely related to two things: strong economic dependence on slavery by the plantation elite that dominated the South - slavery provided not just the wealth but the ideology that justified the planters' well-being, identity, status, and rule; and the rising moral conscience over slavery in the North as well as the rest of the Western world resulted in the South doubling down on slavery. The language of the South in the late 18th century towards slavery was one of a regrettable evil, hopefully it would die out soon, which many did expect. 70 years later, such language utterly disappeared to be replaced with belief that slavery was a positive moral force! What happened in between was the explosion of slavery and growth of the plantation model across the deep south following the invention of the cotton gin.
Absent a Civil War, the only way the South could break its psychological attachment to slavery was when slavery was no longer profitable.
That that would have happened eventually. In the decades following the Civil War, increased competition for cotton from elsewhere in the world, the arrival of the boll weevil, and industrialization reducing the need for labor in agriculture, all swept the South. Large parts of the South also suffered from serious soil erosion. These factors are why the South was so slow to recover, economically, after the Civil War. Cotton prices collapsed. Nonetheless, assuming no Civil War, the cotton planters fat and flush with the wealth of the 1850s would suddenly find themselves increasingly short of income and profit with a few decades. The introduction of new agricultural technologies and methods would also greatly reduce the need for a large scale work force on the plantations. But while a declining mill can fire surplus labor, a planter can't get rid of surplus slaves so easily other than sell them, but if no one is buying slaves, you can't sell them so easily! So slaves would eventually become a burden to increasingly broke planters, who'd quickly figure out it's more cost effective to buy some of the new fangled machines than feed and house an increasingly aging workforce with low productivity.
Under this rapidly changing economic conditions of the latter 19th century, the slaveowners would likely discover their conscience and warm up to abolitionism to rid themselves of what'd be a major economic drain, especially once the economic context became such that it was cheaper to hire seasonal low wage "free" labor as needed rather than be saddled with a large permanent workforce. My hypothesis is that without the Civil War, then by the late 1880s we'd have seen big movements towards some kind of emancipation in the South.
But it does open up a whole different can of worms: what to do about the freed slaves? The racial ideology wasn't changing, white supremacy was real, an increasing poor South eager to rid itself of the economic burdens of slavery would also be in no hurry to grant anything like citizenship, even in the North there was no love of black Americans or eager rush to enfranchise them (the state of New York voted for Lincoln in 1860 while simultaneously rejecting enfranchisement for free black residents). What the Civil War did was provide to the context for the rapid adoption of the 13th and 14th amendment. Absent the Civil War, how much longer would have it taken? Probably a heck of a lot longer. Well into the 20th century, especially as even women couldn't receive the right to vote nationally till 1920!
A tidbit about the bantoid conquistadors & a hint in their role enabling the bio & cultural genocide of asmari aboriginals like the Twa & Saab or Khoisan peoples of interior (i.e. outside of the coastal areas of Africa south of the Sahara).
Another tidbit on how the coastal creole crusaders helped lay the groundwork for massah & the globalist plantation system to invade the sub-Sahran interior inhabited by the forest/jungle dwelling Twa & southern African Saab or Khoisan banu balid, sons of the soil, indigenous.
Absent a Civil War, the only way the South could break its psychological attachment to slavery was when slavery was no longer profitable.
That that would have happened eventually. In the decades following the Civil War, increased competition for cotton from elsewhere in the world, the arrival of the boll weevil, and industrialization reducing the need for labor in agriculture, all swept the South.
I had an econ course in Fall 1978. The professor argued that slavery was unlikely to "die of its own weight." His argument was based on rising prices of slaves at auction. I am constrained, unfortunately, to say he is right.
I had an econ course in Fall 1978. The professor argued that slavery was unlikely to "die of its own weight." His argument was based on rising prices of slaves at auction. I am constrained, unfortunately, to say he is right.
The value of slaves rose throughout the 1840s-1850s but absent the Civil War it's pure speculation as to what would have happened to the value of slaves. We can make reasoned guesses based on US and global economic factors in the latter half of the 19th century. The value of slavery was directly tied to the value of the cotton industry in the South. The value of cotton dropped after the Civil War through increased competition and greater efficiency. That alone would suggest the value of slaves would decline along with the value of cotton.
Industrialization radically changed the face of American farming after the Civil War (which set the framework for the decline of the family farm by the 1890s). The plantation South would not have been immune from this.
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