Suppose Lincoln had said "screw it," and let the Confederacy go its own way. Slavery is outlawed in the North, legal in the South. The Underground Railroad becomes a fixture. Slave return laws aren't a matter of law any more, but of international relations.
The South muddles on growing crops with uneducated labor. The North industrializes. Free men are a lot more inspired to creativity than slaves. The first tractors and farm machines appear in the North.
By the early 1900s, if they hang on to slavery and manual labor, the Confederacy becomes a pathetic, poverty-stricken Third World nation. Mechanized farming has made slavery obsolete.
Out of sheer self-interest, they industrialize as well. The slaves are not so much freed as allowed to wander off. But they're no longer property. It isn't worth it any more.
From there, they have to fight through the same racism and civil rights battles they had to anyway. Maybe they gain equality later than they otherwise would have.
Slavery's days were numbered before the Civil War even started. It is incompatible with high-tech society. You can put slaves to work in factories, doing scut work, but no slave will create new machines and methods for you, even if they have brilliant minds. Would you?
Current Events » in reply to Was the Civil War worth it?
Interesting question.
The whole thread (31 posts)
- On Iraqi civilian deaths.
- To put it into perspective,...
- That number is probably close to correct.
- re: That number is probably close to correct.
- Was the Civil War worth it?
- We didn't invade ourselves.
- And you shed tears for plantation owners too I betcha. (n/t)
- As a Canadian, I have a problem with your perspectives
- "They use US deaths and Iraqis deaths only to serve their own anti-Bush political agenda."
- Interesting question.
- We didn't invade ourselves.