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If slavery had never existed, would there have been a Civil War?
Who knows. Wars are about money and power. It was slavery that fueled the economy of the southern agricultural states. If there had been something different driving the southern economy, if it were industrial instead of agricultural then maybe no, but then again any number of things unequal may have driven the regions apart.
We dont have slavery now and over the last few years several states have threatened to secede. We dont have slavery now yet there is a growing divide among the regions of this country.
If slavery had never existed, would there have been a Civil War?
Well, it was about slavery because the Confederate leaders of the day explicitly said that it was about slavery.
More significantly, in their statements it wasn't the physical need for slaver labor that they brought to their defense.
It was the cultural desire to maintain a caste system deliberately reminiscent of that of ancient Greece (which is why you find so many old mansions in Grecian style) that they used as their defense of slavery. Even if slaves had not been required for mass labor, the south would have insisted on maintaining a slave-based culture.
Thomas Jefferson called slavery a moral depravity and a hideous blot on the nation. He worried that without emancipation the nation was at risk. He also believed that all freed slaves would have to be immediately expelled from the country because he feared they would seek revenge. But, there you go.
If slavery had never existed, would there have been a Civil War?
to be honest its hard to say. while the civil war was fought over states rights, the biggest for the south was slavery though it was legal under the constitution, there were many even in the south that wanted to abolish it.
the founding fathers also wanted to abolish slavery, but in order to maintain the original thirteen colonies, chose to let slavery be legal for the time being, recognizing that in the future the country would see fit to abolish slavery in the end.
one bit of contention before the civil war, was the placement of the mason/dixon line, the point of demarcation of where slavery was legal or not. for instance, if the line were in force today, here in southern arizona slavery would be legal, but in northern arizona it would not.
that said however, the federal government was getting too big and overbearing, and a number of states objected to that. so even without slavery, we still might have fought a civil war, just over different major issues.
As said in another thread, the north fought to preserve the union, not to abolish slavery. The south fought for their right to make their own rules, and slavery was probably the biggest part of that.
If slavery had never existed, would there have been a Civil War?
Yes.
The divisions between North and South were profound and a part of the founding of this country. The North was settled by people who wanted to escape Europe. The South was settled by people who wanted to extend Europe's influence. The North developed an urban/trade economy, the South developed a rural/agrarian economy. The North was made up of small states, the South of large states. The North's urbanization meant that they would eventually dominate the federal government. And the election in 1860 proved that. Lincoln didn't get any votes in the South, he wasn't even on the ballots in the South. At all. His candidacy didn't exist in the South. And yet he was elected. And the executive branch was just the beginning. As the North's demographic dominance grew, the other branches would eventually fall under Northern control as well.
The South was aware of the political trend, and what was happening. While slavery was the driving issue, the cultural issues dividing the two areas would have eventually led to war.
The South did feud with the North over other issues, but the slavery was the one and only issue that was polarizing enough to cause a civil war. In the late 1820s and early 1830s, South Carolina tried to "nullify" a federal tariff that made selling cotton to the UK less profitable, but if it wasn't for slavery, South Carolina would have simply tried to get the tariff repealed rather than nullifying federal law.
Thomas Jefferson called slavery a moral depravity and a hideous blot on the nation. He worried that without emancipation the nation was at risk. He also believed that all freed slaves would have to be immediately expelled from the country because he feared they would seek revenge. But, there you go.
That was when he was younger--he grew more for slavery 30 years later.
But then, his attitude mirrored what was going on across the south during that period. Slavery had always across Christendom been considered a sin, but a lucrative one--at best along the lines of prostitution and rum-running--but never a "good"thing. At the time of the writing of the Constitution, even slaveholders such as Jefferson felt that way.
But over the first thirty years of the 1800s, something spiritually fundamental changed for the worse in the south.
The South did feud with the North over other issues, but the slavery was the one and only issue that was polarizing enough to cause a civil war. In the late 1820s and early 1830s, South Carolina tried to "nullify" a federal tariff that made selling cotton to the UK less profitable, but if it wasn't for slavery, South Carolina would have simply tried to get the tariff repealed rather than nullifying federal law.
The issue of slavery in the new western territories was significant as well.
Let's be sure: Northern opposition to slavery was not about loving black people. For the moralist faction of northern abolitionists, abolishing slavery was about saving white souls.
For economic abolitionists, abolition of slavery was about retaining the value of a white man's labor. Those individual white men understood very well that as they set out west, their greatest competition would be the wealthy with their slaves. The situation was not different from American labor in competition with Chinese labor. If white men who owned nothing but their own labor let slaveholding become legal in the new territories, they would have no chance of their own success.
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