Was it worth it?

[wausaubob]

My prediction is based on the mechanization of agriculture. So I believe slaver would have lasted until the late 1940s to the late 1950s. Even this is dependent on how well enslaved labor performed in manufacturing operation. If slaves made good factory workers, I would predict the 1960 to 1970s.

That's your view. But I don't think the wage laborers and the family farmers were going to tolerate slavery as soon as they had power to restrict and eliminate it. I don't think the economics of cotton was favorable in the long run.

 

[wausaubob]

Given that the price of slaves and demand for them was growing, it seems your statement on it not lasting much longer is more wishful thinking than anything else. I mean, in 1861 they went to war to protect slavery and you think in 10 years or so they would have just voluntarily given it up? That makes absolutely no sense. We will never know how long it would have lasted, but clearly in the 1860's the south was clinging ever more tightly to defending slavery (to the extent they went to war to fight for it), so unless foreign military intervention forcibly changed US policy there was nothing that was going to abolish it short of a Constitutional Amendment. The only way to really view this issue is when we think a Constitutional Amendment reasonably could have been passed.

A Constitutional Amendment requires a 3/4ths vote of the states. Since we had 15 slave states in 1860, and if we assume they all vote against any such amendment, then it would have taken 45 free states, for a total of 60 states, to pass any such amendment. Since we currently only have 50, not looking good if the slave states did not voluntarily give up slavery. Now, if we assume that Maryland, Delaware and Kentucky eventually at some time in the 19th Century eventually become free states, that still means 12 votes against, which would require 36 votes for the amendment, which means a total of 48 states. The US admitted its 48th state in 1912.

If one more state, perhaps Missouri, became a free state, then that would leave 11 slave states, and thus needing 33 votes in favor, for a total of 44 states. The US admitted its 44th state in 1890.

Given the reality of the amendment process, I tend to think its unrealistic to think slavery gets abolished before 1890 and that assumes every formerly slave state votes against its former sister slave states, which is not guaranteed by any means. I think it probably lingers into the 20th century. This all assumes that history plays out like it did and I realize that games can be played with breaking up free territories into more than one state, and accelerating admission dates, so maybe we can move up the dates a little. It also assumes the admission of no more slave states, of course. But the above I think is a good framework for considering when slavery might have been abolished.that

That is good analysis. But while the ratio of paid labor states to states continuing slavery would be changing in a unified country, the urban centers of the east, and the Midwest towns and cities would be growing in population much faster than the population of the southern areas. It rapidly progresses to a point in which the Democrats can't win any presidential elections, and they start losing all the state legislatures too.
And @archieclement had a good point. The slow growth of the enslaved population was causing a rapid rise in the price of slaves. The small farmers were being priced out of the market.

Without slavery being constitutionally abolished, it would be eliminated in DC. The Fugitive Slave Law would seriously amended, and the Republicans would use the interstate slave trade as the point at which they would keep the issue in front of the public.
The secessionist weren't wrong about what was going to happen.

 

[JerryD]

Without slavery being constitutionally abolished, it would eliminated in DC. The Fugitive Slave Law would seriously amended, and the Republicans would use the interstate slave trade as the point at which they would keep the issue in front of the public.
The secessionist weren't wrong about what was going to happen.

I'm gonna disagree with you, at least a bit. In the long term, maybe you are right. But after the 1860 election there was still a proslavery majority in the House. GOP had a plurality of 116 seats, but the Dems had 83 and various other southern and pro slavery parties had an additional 39 seats. So Lincoln was not going to be able to snap his fingers and get anti-slavery legislation passed if the southern delegates kept their seats. And remember the US Supreme Court still held a very pro-slavery majority. So while the long term prospects for slavery were not great, it was still very secure in 1860, and certainly nothing had happened yet to justify secession. Alec Stephens made this point in the secession debates in Georgia. He claimed to be a staunch defender of southern rights, but tried to convince the idiots clamoring for immediate secession to actually wait until a southern right was violated by the new administration. He felt they were acting prematurely by seceding by a FEAR of what MIGHT happen. Given the momentous step of secession and likely war, that seems like a pretty good argument to me. But then, a great many people down south were not acting rationally in 1860.

 

[archieclement]

But I think you make the point it wasn't about cotton, least to anti slavery sentiment.

While I agree wage earners and small farmers were increasingly against slavery, I haven't seen anything or believe it because they were wanting to pick cotton.......they realized slavery was quite adaptable to any agriculture.... and while perhaps debatable, wage earners feared to any industry.

 

[wausaubob]

I'm gonna disagree with you, at least a bit. In the long term, maybe you are right. But after the 1860 election there was still a proslavery majority in the House. GOP had a plurality of 116 seats, but the Dems had 83 and various other southern and pro slavery parties had an additional 31 seats. So Lincoln was not going to be able to snap his fingers and get anti-slavery legislation passed if the southern delegates kept their seats. And remember the US Supreme Court still held a very pro-slavery majority. So while the long term prospects for slavery were not great, it was still very secure in 1860, and certainly nothing had happened yet to justify secession. Alec Stephens made this point in the secession debates in Georgia. He claimed to be a staunch defender of southern rights, but tried to convince the idiots clamoring for immediate secession to actually wait until a southern right was violated by the new administration. He felt they were acting prematurely by seceding by a FEAR of what MIGHT happen. Given the momentous step of secession and likely war, that seems like a pretty good argument to me. But then, a great many people down south were not acting rationally in 1860.goo

Good post. Not all the Democrats were pro slavery.
The overview of the census was available by December 1860. The results are in the NY Times archives. The seats that were going to be allocated to Illinois and other western states were obvious.
The slave states were going to lose on some issues that were going to limit but not abolish slavery. But both northern parties were developing pro growth and pro immigration policies. Long before slavery was abolished its political power in Congress and Elec College was going to fade away.
I think the politicians in the deep south states knew they were losing control over the middle 8 states. And they knew the northern areas were gaining power at a very rapid rate, because that was mathematically obvious.
The deep south, as part of the unified nation, was on an extraordinary winning streak which included wars, and using US power to buy out European rights in North America. I don't envision a means by which those men give up their expansion ambitions until they had tried one more and lost.
Sooner or later the white families in the south were going to want the same things that existed in the north and if they didn't get it they were going to emigrate to the paid labor states.

 

[wausaubob]

Was the slave economy strong, or was the political cover provided by a few ambitious northern politicians a thin veneer over a unstable house of cards?
Slavery was already being redistributed to the areas that had the best soils and the lowest transportation costs. Most of the farmers in the south did not have a large enough margin to ever purchase a slave, and they knew it.
People have proposed that slavery could have used in industrial applications. But it wasn't happening on any scale by 1860. And where it happened the white labor force left to go to eastern Tennessee or to Pittsburg to become iron workers someplace else. In urban centers most of the slaves were house servants. Not many people could afford that.
The sudden rise in the price of slaves was a reflection that death rates in what was then the southwest were high, and likely a sign that the interstate slave trade was becoming an odious replication of many of the worst abuses of the inward passage.

 

[wausaubob]

But I think you make the point it wasn't about cotton, least to anti slavery sentiment.

While I agree wage earners and small farmers were increasingly against slavery, I haven't seen anything or believe it because they were wanting to pick cotton.......they realized slavery was quite adaptable to any agriculture.... and while perhaps debatable, wage earners feared to any industry.

I'm not a cotton expert. All I remember is one of the economists asserting that cotton was very risky for the small farmer. There wasn't as much money to be made in corn and hogs. But the risk of hunger was reduced.
We know the people who succeeded in cotton production became wealthy. We don't know what happened to the people who tried it and failed and probably had to sell out.

 

[wausaubob]

But I think you make the point it wasn't about cotton, least to anti slavery sentiment.

While I agree wage earners and small farmers were increasingly against slavery, I haven't seen anything or believe it because they were wanting to pick cotton.......they realized slavery was quite adaptable to any agriculture.... and while perhaps debatable, wage earners feared to any industry.

I thnk @Philip Leigh suggested that had the slave owning part of the south been willing to get out of the way of the two different pro growth agendas of the northern parties, even the Republicans would have conceded to a slow process of abolition.

 

[damYankee]

I'm gonna disagree with you, at least a bit. In the long term, maybe you are right. But after the 1860 election there was still a proslavery majority in the House. GOP had a plurality of 116 seats, but the Dems had 83 and various other southern and pro slavery parties had an additional 39 seats. So Lincoln was not going to be able to snap his fingers and get anti-slavery legislation passed if the southern delegates kept their seats. And remember the US Supreme Court still held a very pro-slavery majority. So while the long term prospects for slavery were not great, it was still very secure in 1860, and certainly nothing had happened yet to justify secession. Alec Stephens made this point in the secession debates in Georgia. He claimed to be a staunch defender of southern rights, but tried to convince the idiots clamoring for immediate secession to actually wait until a southern right was violated by the new administration. He felt they were acting prematurely by seceding by a FEAR of what MIGHT happen. Given the momentous step of secession and likely war, that seems like a pretty good argument to me. But then, a great many people down south were not acting rationally in 1860.

With the power of unions representing the non slave workers, aka, miners, railroad employees, longshoremen, teamsters and the international anti slavery movement, along with the readily available supply of cheap farm labor provided by immigrant workers who the farm owner did not have to purchase or provided housing, food, clothing and medical care I don't see slavery lasting past 1900, maybe 1910 in a stretch.
The advent of electrical power and self-propelled farm equipment, automobiles, all which required much improvement to infrastructure such as hydro electric/coal powered power plants, high power cables, the development of municiple water and sewage systems the boom in the oil industry, there were more careers available to the average non slave citizens and they were unionizing, to protect jobs for freedmen.
There was much more at play than political party interest., and the interest of a few southern cotton and tobacco farmers.
Politicians may claim to be motivated by deeply held principles, but that is a bluff. Money and power drives all politics. Corporate America was in full bloom in 1900 and had much more political clout than the few cotton and tobacco farmers in the South,
Stephens and those pro-slavery politicians of the mid 1800s were not going to be around in 1900, the nation had grown past the Antebellum Era, there was no turning back.

 

[major bill]

I still believe that slavery would have continued until there were practical mechanical cotton harvesters. These were not available until the mid 1930s. Even then lit would have take about a decade before they mostly replaced slaves picking cotton.

Ws it worrh the blood to eliminate slavery or let it exist for 90 more years is a moral and political question which is hard to answer.

 

[gary]

Nope. The debt alone was staggering and took decades to pay off. I concur with others that modernization (machinery) would have eliminated slavery. War makes for great reading but what a waste of lives and resources. Post-war and up today a bigger winner is the publishing companies. Thank you Morningside Press (RIP Bob Younger), Broadfoot, S-B,etc., etc.

World power was mentioned. While the United States Navy could not be challenged by any power (we had monitors and the RN and French Navy only a handful of ironclads), it quickly slipped into decay while other navies modernized and introduced early battleships that could smash our monitors. It wasn't until the late 1880s that we began to build the "New Navy" of steel ships and even then it was small compared to what the Europeans had.

 

[damYankee]

I still believe that slavery would have continued until there were practical mechanical cotton harvesters. These were not available until the mid 1930s. Even then lit would have take about a decade before they mostly replaced slaves picking cotton.

Ws it worrh the blood to eliminate slavery or let it exist for 90 more years is a moral and political question which is hard to answer.

Maybe we should ask those enslaved?

 

[archieclement]

Nope. The debt alone was staggering and took decades to pay off. I concur with others that modernization (machinery) would have eliminated slavery. War makes for great reading but what a waste of lives and resources. Post-war and up today a bigger winner is the publishing companies. Thank you Morningside Press (RIP), etc.

World power was mentioned. While the United States Navy could not be challenged by any power (we had monitors and the RN and French Navy only a handful of ironclads), it quickly slipped into decay while other navies modernized and introduced early battleships that could smash our monitors. It wasn't until the late 1880s that we began to build the "New Navy" of steel ships and even then it was small compared to what the Europeans had.

As well the way it was done through civil war, besides immense loss of life, debt and destruction. It wasn't thought out at all, just a series of knee jerk reactions that left blacks mostly in poverty, and still in quasi slavery with share cropping for decades. Which really was impossible for much else with leaving most previous slave states in poverty to this day. That the poorest US states today is dominated by former Confederate states is certainly a rather lasting negative legacy.

As well i don't see how one couldn't think forcing abolition on states against their wishes wouldnt create lasting resentment........with the blacks themselves the easiest targets to take it out on.

 

[archieclement]

Maybe we should ask those enslaved?

Do you know any slaves to have a credible discussion with concerning different ways slavery could ended?

I seriously doubt many would objected to a peaceful ending, or one that resulted in better conditions or rights.

Haven't seen accounts of slaves who were peacefully and voluntary emancipated, objecting to the peaceful method. Don't think some desire for a bloody war as the only method, was ever preferred by very many people of any race.

 

[wausaubob]

As well the way it was done through civil war, besides immense loss of life, debt and destruction. It wasn't thought out at all, just a series of knee jerk reactions that left blacks mostly in poverty, and still in quasi slavery with share cropping for decades. Which really was impossible with leaving most previous slave states in poverty to this day. That the poorest US states today is dominated by former Confederate states is certainly a rather lasting negative legacy.

As well i don't see how one couldn't think forcing abolition on states against their wishes wouldnt create lasting resentment........with the blacks themselves the easiest targets to take it out on.

Recall what @archieclement wrote above: It wasn't only about slavery.
In four short years the financial crisis of the war created a new financial system dominated by the NY banks, a federal currency and federal war debt. Fifty years of change were compressed into the war years.
The railroads moved from a developmental technology to a proven technology. And many soldiers, maybe even all, took one or more railroad journeys often over long distances. By the end of the war the state governments and the federal government got out of the way of the railroads, accompanied by significant corruption, and the US transportation system was modernized. The railroads became dominant. Jainey's automatic coupler won out, as did Westinghouse's air breaks, and then the steel revolution occurred. I don't think that amount of change would have occurred without the war.
I don't see how the internal and international immigration streams fill up the Midwest including Missouri if the international immigrants don't have confidence in the US and democracy.
One unanswered question is whether the expantionist ideas of the slave owning part of the south could be extinguished by any other means. Both sides had been winning wars. It is it odd that they turned on each other when there was no longer an outside threat?
There was going to be a war. Until people learned what a war sustained by railroad logistics and handicapped by primitive medical knowledge was like, there was going to be a war.

 

[Nathan Stuart]

Given the reality of the amendment process, I tend to think its unrealistic to think slavery gets abolished before 1890 and that assumes every formerly slave state votes against its former sister slave states, which is not guaranteed by any means. I think it probably lingers into the 20th century.

That reasoning is compelling to support any notion that slavery was not simply going to disappear overnight in the requisite number of those slave states.

Nevertheless, personally, still found it difficult to fathom how an anachronistic slave labor system could continue into the modern era of the 20th. century in such a leading industrialized and enlightened society, like the US.

But your argument remains sound and plausible.

 

[wausaubob]

If slavery had continued in a still unified nation with the 3/5ths compromise in place, the far south region was going to become politically irrelevant. The election of an anti-slavery president was just the first of many steps.

 

[Nathan Stuart]

It seems unlikely that the US would benefit from immigration and foreign investment at the historic level if it was confronted by the Confederacy. The Confederacy would have been a pariah nation practicing an anachronistic labor system.

Agree. Thought in the modern 20th. century era of increasing globalization and economic cooperation treaties, international pressure would have been a big factor influencing the US to actively (somehow) take steps to extinguish any anachronistic slave labor systems persisting in some of its parts.

 

[atlantis]

It was worth it for the US to maintain sovereignty over an area the size of France, Spain, Portugal combined. It was not worth it for the confederates who saw their economic/social/political system utterly destroyed.
Would US manufacturers have relocated production to take advantage of slave labor either owned or leased? if the confederacy had secured independence.

 

[damYankee]

Do you know any slaves to have a credible discussion with concerning different ways slavery could ended?

I seriously doubt many would objected to a peaceful ending, or one that resulted in better conditions or rights.

Haven't seen accounts of slaves who were peacefully and voluntary emancipated, objecting to the peaceful method. Don't think some desire for a bloody war as the only method, was ever preferred by very many people of any race.

Really? So you think there were no, as in ZERO freeman living in the US?
Sounds like a topic for another thread. But there were many.

Free Blacks, 1619–1860 | Encyclopedia.com

Free Blacks, 1619–1860 In 1860 some half a million free people of African descent resided in the United States. Source for information on Free Blacks, 1619–1860: Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History dictionary.

www.encyclopedia.com

In 1860 some half a million free people of African descent resided in the United States. Known alternately as free Negroes, free blacks, free people of color, or simply freepeople (to distinguish them from post–Civil War freedpeople), they composed less than 2 percent of the nation's population and about 9 percent of all black people. Although the free black population grew in the centuries before the universal emancipation that accompanied the Civil War, it generally increased far more slowly than either the white or the slave population, so that it was a shrinking proportion of American society.