Campfire Chat - General DiscussionsThis is a forum for posting discussion topics, questions, current events, and anything else you'd like to chat about. Please post serious Civil War History threads in appropriate History Forums.
First, I want to thank Ole for the history lesson about
reconstruction.
Now another subject. First, I want to say that slavery is a stain on our country's history that, as a
Southerner, I am ashamed of.
Now, my question. What would the history of the United States have been had there not been slavery?
Would there have been a Civil War over States Rights?
We're not ever likely to know about that, are we? It was. And no matter how much we regret or apologize or excuse or argue, that piece of our history was there.
Maybe. Just maybe. One of these days I'll tire of talking about it (don't you wish?) But history is a passion and I can't see the day when it isn't.
Anyway. You asked a serious question and deserve a serious answer.
No. Without slavery, there were indications that the south would have industrialized and worked on its infrastructure and brought its ruralness into parity with the rest of the country.
The northern farmer had the same advantages and disadvantages as the southern farmer. Sunup to sundown, they did the same things. But, in the north, the farmer had a market within a day or two on a road. The plantation system built roads only for itself. The best the southern farmer could hope for was to feed his family and maybe, just maybe, sell some corn or wheat to the plantation next door while there were farmers in Iowa selling their surplus grain to England.
Sorry. Banker, but the entire mess resides on the backs of those who repressed their slaves as well as their neighbors. Given a fair chance at fair trade, I stongly suspect that the southern farmer could have at least equalled his northern counterpart. But he was not given that opportunity, simply because he didn't have a road on which to travel to peddle his surplus. What roads there were were made to get the cotton bales to a boat or a railhead.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
yea it would have been diffrent but i still think the war was not stoppable. Their was to much tension built up and you can only compromise so many times.
without slavery there would not have been any reason for compromise.
__________________
"In mortal combat, a man may and will become so infuriated by the din and dangers of a bloody fight that his heart will turn to stone and his every de sire [be] for blood."
John Hadley, 7th Indiana after the battle at Port Republic
Thank you, Dred. Without slavery, there would be no diverging cultures, no insulting abolitionists, no reason that a southerner couldn't get to a market, couldn't have a nearby school, couldn't have considered investing in a piece of ground that was more workable than his.
It naturally follows that the cotton south would have had its own financial institutions, cotton brokers, shippers and manufacturing. Will leave it with this statement:
"We are an agricultural people, we are a primitive but a civilized people. We have no cities -- we don't want them. We have no literature -- we don't need any yet. We have no press -- we are glad of it. We do not require a press because we go out and discuss all public questions from the stump with our people. We have no commercial marine -- no navy -- we don't want them. Your ships carry our produce, and you can protect your own vessels. We want no manufactures: we desire no trading, no mechanical or manufacturing classes. As long as we have our rice, our sugar, our tobacco and our cotton, we can command wealth to purchase all we want from the nations with which we are in amity, and to lay up money besides."
Granted, Louis Wigfall was a bit of a kook, but what he said comes extremely close to what I'm trying to say. Does he, anywhere in that paragraph, give any consideration to the little guy? No. It's "we don't want it, therefore, they don't need it." At the bottom of this attitude is the slaveocracy.
It took generations for the "attitude" to develop, but it did develop and Wigfall expresses the major problem of the time.
The greedy northern robber barons wanted the little guy to prosper so they could make money off the prosperous merchant, farmer or mechanic. The greedy southern planter didn't need the little guy; he had slaves.
At least, that is my stance this week.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
Maury Klein's "Days of Defiance." Intro to one of the chapters.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
come on give me a break! I know slavery was a huge part in the years leading up to the war but you can't convince me that slavery was the entire reason for the war.
CivilWarTalk.com -
A free and friendly Civil War community. 
Slavery 
Linear Mode
