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So. How about we get back to quarrelling about the topic of the thread: "Slavery, would it have died out in the US without the war?"
I feel it would have.
First, we have strong southern sentiments against the instution well before the war. Presumably, those societies learned to keep their mouths shut when the situation started heating up, but did they go away?
Second, the economic interest was concentrated in a minority of the population, and they would have been mostly the envied wealthy.
Third, the population of slaves in the Upper and Border South was declining. I have to assume that these would also be the first to abandon slavery, robbing the Deep South of even more representation.
Fourth, international pressure could not be counted for long on giving the slave-owners a pass. In 20 years, the great mills of England would not have needed King Cotton for their survival. What about the great mills of New England? They still required domestic cotton. Perhaps the time of the South African boycotts was not yet present, but there would have been the rumblings and pressure to buy cotton produced by paid labor.
Fifth, the demise of cotton, as the major slave crop, was becoming predictable. Only in Mississippi and Louisiana was there suitable amounts of soil available for clearing and planting. (A note here: cotton-planting was generally a rapacious practice. Settled planters contented themselves with a very nice income by the 1/3 method: one-third in crop, one-third fallow, and one-third in brush and saplings being cleared. Many, however, simply pillaged their land and then moved west to resume pillaging.) Sugar was limited to a narrow strip in Louisiana (and even then it was an iffy undertaking) and rice to the swamps of South Carolina. I view this as handwriting on the wall.
Sixth, the territories were totally unsuited to planting cotton. A map of slavery reveals that the slave population in East Texas was substantial; in West Texas, virtually nonexistent. Cotton requires a growing season of at least 200 days and must have adequate rain. Cereal grains can get by on much less. Although slaves would have been useful in tilling and harvesting, there's not much they can get done in a howling blizzard.
Seventh, mining and factory work, although one might reasonably assume that slavery might have eased over into that use, just doesn't work for me. The fire-eaters were struggling (and conniving) to keep things the way they had always been: the patrician's ease and class. What they instigated a war over is not something I see just fading away into factories and mines.
Eighth, while Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi were crying for more slaves, their need was also short-lived. There would be a day when the demand would start tapering off and the value starts dropping.
And that's 1880 -- 1890 at the latest. Before, during and after that the pressure to free everyone would have been increasingly irresistable. I see eight separate, national and international pressure points working against the practice. -- not to mention the economic inevitability of its collapse.
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
Seventh, mining and factory work, although one might reasonably assume that slavery might have eased over into that use, just doesn't work for me. The fire-eaters were struggling (and conniving) to keep things the way they had always been: the patrician's ease and class. What they instigated a war over is not something I see just fading away into factories and mines.
ole
Slave labor was already being widely used in factory work at the time of the civil war. Half of the workers at the Tredegar Iron Works were slaves, and it was the same in many iron mills. If the south was forced to decide between emancipating their slaves and sending them into manufacturing/mining I see no reason to believe that they would have chosen the former unless it was accompanied by colonization. They were absolutely horrified at the idea of living side by side with millions of free blacks.
I do think that political pressure from the north and from overseas would have forced them to end slavery by today, but I believe it would have existed well into the 20th century.
Third, the population of slaves in the Upper and Border South was declining. I have to assume that these would also be the first to abandon slavery, robbing the Deep South of even more representation.
Delaware had less than 2000 slaves in 1860, and lots of free blacks. They probably would have been the next state to end slavery if the issue had gone along quietly. Maybe by 1875-80.
Maryland's slave population generally had been in decline or flat in every Census since 1790. They still had some 87,000 slaves in 1860, but they also had a large free black population, particularly in Baltimore. I'd guess they'd have ended slavery sometime after DE, maybe a decade or so later.
Missouri had a small percentage of slaves (about 12%) and a rapidly rising population of European immigrants opposed to slavery. I think they would eventually have gone out on their own, maybe in the 1880s.
Kentucky had the largest percentage of slaves, but much less than the states below them. Maybe by 1900.
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
Sounds like "at some point, but we're not talking less than a generation or two, at best.".
And given the rigidity and stubborness of Russia at retaining serfdom-in-all-but-name up until 1917, I imagine it would have taken a great deal to make it happen.
Economically unwise or not, the defenders of slavery were a stuborn bunch.
__________________ Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less. - Robert E. Lee
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. - Abraham Lincoln
Slave labor was already being widely used in factory work at the time of the civil war. Half of the workers at the Tredegar Iron Works were slaves, and it was the same in many iron mills.
Good point, Parrot, but "widely used" doesn't mean much when you're talking close to 4,000,000 slaves. I'm guessing here, but by far the major part of the slave population was used in agriculture.
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If the south was forced to decide between emancipating their slaves and sending them into manufacturing/mining I see no reason to believe that they would have chosen the former unless it was accompanied by colonization.
I don't care for the word, "south." The southern population was almost as diverse as the north when it came to slavery.
That being said, the economic burden was on the slave-owner. He could work the slave in the fields or rent him out to help build someone's barn. And the idea of mining at the time was all but irrelevant. The mines were in the west (the coal mines of the Appalachians were not developed until after the War). The wealth in slaves was concentrated in a small southern population. Paper money and collateral. If every planter went broke the next day, it wouldn't have much affected the yoeman farmer or the artisan. He still had to scrabble from day to day to feed his family. Except in your next statement:
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They were absolutely horrified at the idea of living side by side with millions of free blacks.
And in that you've nailed the resistance to emancipation in both the north and south.
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
Sounds like "at some point, but we're not talking less than a generation or two, at best.".
That's about where I'm standing.
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And given the rigidity and stubborness of Russia at retaining serfdom-in-all-but-name up until 1917, I imagine it would have taken a great deal to make it happen.
The Russian dynasty has nothing to do with it. Russia was ruled (more or less) by a tsar who could have you shot for disagreeing with him. As much as some like to label Lincoln as a tyrant, he did not have that power. He had to answer to congress and, through them, to the public.
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Economically unwise or not, the defenders of slavery were a stuborn bunch.
As was just about everybody on this continent. Every one of our bunches is still stubborn. Fortunately, we have an historical lesson so we can peek at what stubborn can mean.
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 point of refering to Russia is that "ludicriously impractical and regarded as a bad thing just about everywhere else" doesn't translate into "gotten rid of quickly". I don't see the Southern planters being any more eager to end slavery than the Russian aristocracy to abandon serfdom.
And agreed, though the defenders of slavery appear to be in the "really, really stubborn" as opposed to "stubborn" or "really stubborn".
Hard to tell when most people aren't saying anything. For all that it was a burning issue, the actual speakers were relatively few.
__________________ Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less. - Robert E. Lee
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. - Abraham Lincoln
I'm less optimistic about this than Ole, for example. A few more-or-less random thoughts:
As a starting point, the question "would it have died out in the US without the war" seems to assume that the slave states stayed in the Union? If so, how would that have happened? Someone else winning the 1860 election? A pacifying compromise during the secession winter? Because the answer to that question seems to me to determine what federal institutional support for slavery there would have been. If slavery would have been permitted in the territories (perhaps by the Dred Scott rule being written into the constitution) it's perfectly plausible to me that in areas of intensive agriculture such as the Central Valley of California, it might have taken root. I've never been convinced that slavery was tied to cotton (or if it was, that it would have remained so). Look at areas where large numbers of illegals are being used (I use the word "used" advisedly) today.
And the social attitudes. Another century of legal segregation (which would still be in place today without pressure from a black community that was free to speak albeit oppressed) proves to me that the South (and, yes, not just the South) would have been perfectly willing to see blacks kept "in their place." (Just last night, I saw reports of a Georgia congressman calling a certain presidential candidate and his wife "uppity.") And if their "place" was slavery rather than segregation, they wouldn't have found it as easy to resist.
I'm afraid I really see white Southerners, and not just the slaveowning class - and whites in western areas where slavery might have taken hold, digging in their heels, to plenty of tacit support from the North.
As I see it, the South was in a no-win situation. Slavery was economical, it appears to me, only when used for a labor-intensive, high-value crop. As Ole rightly points out, slavery was mostly confined to rice, sugar, cotton and tobacco. Cotton, at the time, was generally grown in such a way as to deplete the soil, requiring clearling of new land. Sugar was heavily subsidzed through tarrifs and was only viable in a small area, as was rice.
Recall that one of the problems of slaves versus hired labor is that you have to provide a "cradle to grave" system of support, as opposed to having a bunch of Irish working in your factories that you can pay subistence wages while they're healthy and then can them when they can no longer work.
However, the South could not simply free the slaves. Jefferson was correct in that the South had a tiger by the tail. What happens if you simply free 4,000,000 (or more, as the slaves were increasing through procreation) and are suddenly the minority in your own land? The social and political ramifications are staggering.
Apologists can say that the South would have done a better job of freeing their slaves gradually, but how would this have been done? How do you displace half of your population and destroy a large portion of your tax base in the process? Unfortunately, if the South had simply freed their slaves and told them to go North to find jobs in the factories, there would have been a tremendous backlash in the North.
All I could see happening, absent the Civil War to destroy the old social order, is a gradual emancipation in name only, taking several generations, to be replaced by an aparteid system lasting much longer than the present day. The South could say "We are freeing the slaves" and then enact exactly Jim Crow laws even harsher than those passed historically. Without the protections of the 13th and 14th amendments (which I cannot see passing absent the political upheavals of the war), it would take generations to push for social reform. One cannot even point to the end of Aparteid in South Africa in that there would not have been the pressure from the United States to end that system if a similar system was in place in the U.S.
Yes, slavery would have ended eventually (at least in name), but the United States would look much, much different and a lot less democratic absent the upheavals of the Civil War.
At least that's what I think.....
__________________ "There must be more historians of the Civil War than there were generals figthing in it... Of the two groups, the historians are the more belligerent." David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (1961)
If slavery would have been permitted in the territories (perhaps by the Dred Scott rule being written into the constitution) it's perfectly plausible to me that in areas of intensive agriculture such as the Central Valley of California, it might have taken root. I've never been convinced that slavery was tied to cotton (or if it was, that it would have remained so).
California had already adopted a free state constitution. While California was arguably the least anti-slavery of any free state, they were overwhelmingly against slavery in their state, because they didn't want to compete with slave labor, or have to live side by side with blacks, free or slave.
You make a good point about slavery being allowed in the territories. If it had been, I see no reason that slave labor couldn't have been used for mining in Arizona and New Mexico. Mining was pretty well established their by the late 1800's and I don't think there is any doubt that slavery would still have existed at that point.
Last edited by Parrott Gun; 09-11-2008 at 04:02 PM.
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