save the white soldiers: ending slavery without war

[MercenaryChef]

In an effort to not tread upon a thread about trolling I figured I would open this one on a topic we have discussed a bit before.

Could slavery have been ended in the usa without a war?

Ser scot said: Slavery did need to end.  I just think looking at the British Empire's efforts it may have been possible to end it without force but that's easy to say at this point.

I would guess everyone on this board is anti slavery. We can unite on that.

However, allowing it to just run its course until no longer financially reasonable or socially acceptable. .. was that an option?

Some could suggest it would have just ended in its own. Does that put a greater value upon the infrastructure of the nation and thousands of almost entirely white soldiers over the inhuman, demoralizing and universally accepted wrong nature of owning people.

Is a bit more slavery an acceptable cost?

[Howdyphillip]

I am not going to make a lot of posts in this topic as it usually gets heated very quickly, and I have made my stance abundantly clear in the past. I would like to point out that the very nature of the thread title is misleading. The cost of the Civil War was not primarily felt only by white soldiers. Entire regions and cities were destroyed.

The Civil War was the greatest preventable tragedy in American history.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

Is a bit more slavery an acceptable cost?

No. Although suppose those who are opposed to killing in all circumstances might disagree.

But really, hasn't this topic been done to death here?

[MisterOJ]

I am not going to make a lot of posts in this topic as it usually gets heated very quickly, and I have made my stance abundantly clear in the past. I would like to point out that the very nature of the thread title is misleading. The cost of the Civil War was not primarily felt only by white soldiers. Entire regions and cities were destroyed.

The Civil War was the greatest preventable tragedy in American history.

I suspect MC is attempting to make a point about trolling.

[Inigima]

I'm hardly a Civil War scholar, but slavery was pretty integral to the Southern economy, right? I have a hard time seeing that ending easily.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

MC,

Possible but difficult. Legally after "Dred Scott" blacks were not considered citizens of the US and (ironically) States retained powers took a hit because the Court held because Slaves were personal property States lacked the power to deny people the right to travel with Slaves in free States.

It would have required paying people to free their slaves with a drop dead date for freedom for all slaves. Had that been passed it is still possible States would have left the Union over that issue and violence would have resulted.

[Pero the first of His name]

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080916145312AACFrc0

http://www.history.com/news/5-things-you-may-not-know-about-lincoln-slavery-and-emancipation

That war was not for abolition or about slaves.

And these links should tell you more about Lincoln and his freeing of the slaves.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

The basic moral questions seems pretty simple to me:

Is it justifiable to use force, even lethal force if necessary, to free yourself from the bonds of slavery? Yes.

Is it justifiable to use force, even lethal force if necessary, to free third parties from the bonds of slavery? Yes.

The problem is that the the "Civil War" encompasses a whole host of moral issues relating not just to whether it was a "just cause" (it was) but also to the "just prosecution" of the war. I don't think there is any legitimate moral criticism of the causes of the war, but there are certainly legitimate criticisms of the just prosecution of the war on both sides. For example - is conscription, a practice that both sides engaged in, ever justified? I maintain that it is not. Is the intentional destruction of civilian property and infrastructure ever justified as an end unto itself (ie: state terrorism - Sherman's march to the sea, the goal of makign the South howl, etc.)? I maintain that it is not.

Do I think the war was prosecuted unjustly? Absolutely. Just like pretty much every war in history. Does that mean for a second that the cause of war wasn't justified? No.

[Cabbageleafbastard]

In an effort to not tread upon a thread about trolling I figured I would open this one on a topic we have discussed a bit before.

Could slavery have been ended in the usa without a war?

Yes it could have, though it probably would have taken the coming of the 20th century. People have a misconception that Lincoln was a huge supporter of slave rights. He wasn't at first, his own letters reveal he would have allowed slavery to continue in the South, as long as long as they stayed in the Union. This was Lincoln's reason for war, and he let it be known he was resupplying Fort Sumter, because he knew the South would defend the Fort, and Lincoln would have the support to engage in war. It was only later when Lincoln decided to free the slaves. Had the the South used diplomacy, they could have kept their slaves for a longer period of time, thank goodness they didn't.

[Elder Sister]

This is a tricky subject. I had ancestors who fought in the war in the Confederate army. And it still is viewed as a tragic, horrible event in the south. Yes, we look upon it and our dead with a certain amount of reverence and somberness, but not for the reasons most people outside of the south think. We don't mourn the loss of a great era (like the movies would have you believe). Most people in the south were like my family; poor, NOT in favor of seccession, and unable to afford to fight a war that had little if anything to do with them. In my home state of Mississippi, the counties that had a few wealthy landowners carried the movement for secession - they swayed a whole state to vote for secession. The majority of actual residents just wanted to be left alone and live their lives. My family never owned slaves. They were farmers. When the war came, they lost their men, their homes, and nearly starved. So yeah, we look back on that time with a certain amount of regret and mournfulness.

I think the war was pretty much inevitable. The wealthy landowners in the South refused to budge on the issue, even though it was morally repugnant to many of them; and as long as Europe was willing and able to buy their cotton, it would have continued. The invention of the cotton gin guaranteed that the practice would continue.

[Robin Of House Hill]

Whether the war was about slavery or about whether power should rest at the federal or state level, I think it was inevitable. I don't see how either side was likely to compromise. If I'm not mistaken, after the war, people stopped saying, "the United States are", and started saying, "the United States is".

[Weeping Sore]

I think the more interesting topic is what would have happened if the South had simply been allowed to secede, and pressure brought to bear on them as a foreign country via embargo on any goods derived from slave labor. Maybe naval blockades as well, but no invasion of the South. Suddenly the Northern legislature wouldn't have to compromise in the slightest over anti-slavery laws. Slave owners could be prevented from traveling to the North unless they freed their slaves, etc.

Best of all, to this day we wouldn't have to compromise with Southern conservative assholes in Congress and in the electorate.

[IheartTesla]

It would have required paying people to free their slaves with a drop dead date for freedom for all slaves. Had that been passed it is still possible States would have left the Union over that issue and violence would have resulted.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/06/no-lincoln-could-not-have-bought-the-slaves/277073/

One "economic" solution to the slave problem would be for those who objected to slavery to "buy out" the economic interest of Southern slaveholders. Under such a scheme, the federal government would purchase slaves. A major problem here was that the costs of such a scheme would have been enormous. Claudia Goldin estimates that the cost of having the government buy all the slaves in the United States in 1860, would be about $2.7 billion (1973: 85, Table 1). Obviously, such a large sum could not be paid all at once.

The slave trade was too profitable and there wasnt enough money to go around. Also, I think Lincoln had some sort of proposal he took to one of the southern states and it was rejected.

[Elder Sister]

Newsflash, Vlad P. We do not hold the patent on conservative assholes. They are everywhere. And please be mindful of the fact that not everyone in the south is a conservative asshole.

Some of us are liberal assholes, thank you very much.

[Penguin king]

I think Slavery would have inevitably diminished over time in the south. Industrialisation was making it economically unviable, and social attitudes were changing. The southern plantations were pretty much doomed in the long run.

I'm still heavily on the side of the abolishionists though. It doesn't feel just to wait years for that level of human rights abuse to end when it can be forcibly ended much sooner.

[IheartTesla]

Ok, so Lincoln had a 'compensated emancipation' plan for Delaware that had ~1800 slaves (<2% of the population) so it would be the easiest state to begin with. The proposals were ~$300-500 per slave. The plan did not have enough support in the legislative houses (lower house primarily), so the idea was dropped

That just goes to show you how difficult it would have been in states with much larger slave populations. No, it has to be accepted that war was inevitable.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

In an effort to not tread upon a thread about trolling I figured I would open this one on a topic we have discussed a bit before.

Could slavery have been ended in the usa without a war?

Ser scot said: Slavery did need to end. I just think looking at the British Empire's efforts it may have been possible to end it without force but that's easy to say at this point.

I would guess everyone on this board is anti slavery. We can unite on that.

However, allowing it to just run its course until no longer financially reasonable or socially acceptable. .. was that an option?

Some could suggest it would have just ended in its own. Does that put a greater value upon the infrastructure of the nation and thousands of almost entirely white soldiers over the inhuman, demoralizing and universally accepted wrong nature of owning people.

Is a bit more slavery an acceptable cost?

I don't think we could have ended slavery in this country without violence. I believe the points are as follows:

1. The American South was set up as the colonial exporter to both the Northern economies and to England. The Southern elites had a deep economic stake in preserving the status quo, aided and abetted by England and the North. So long as the cash crops were consistently being purchased, there was no real incentive for the elites to end slavery (like Elder Sis I've seen arguments, btw, that if the Cotton Gin hadn't been invented, things would be different). The fact that England did not support the South was, as best I can tell, basically because of Prince Albert who had rather unfashionable romantic ideals (we'll get to the fashionable romantic ideals in a second).

2. But, you ask, why would non-elite Southerners fight for a cause that benefited them not in the least? I think there are at least 3 reasons. (A) The first is the pernicious view of "romantic" war that arose in the 19th Century. All things gothic and chivalric came back in vogue. By the 1860s, folks had generally forgotten the horrors of the Napoleonic struggles (which frankly didn't really touch the US). Crimea was a distant theatre that had poetry written about it. The "wars" that the US had been involved in generally had rather been frolics (if such things can be expressed as such). So war, in a way that I believe was just not confined to the elite, had seeped down as an admirable alternative (this thinking had its last gasp in WW1). (B ) The second is the way that the US was originally set up and the view to the future - the basic Jeffersonian v. Hamiltonian conflict. Was the United States a Union of separate sovereign states? Or rather was it a Union, subdivided into units of sub-sovereignity? The war decided that conflict but this basic understanding of what the country is and should be is the basis for (C ) the third reason. The third reason is that many Southerners felt themselves first citizens of their state and then citizens of the US (most famously R.E. Lee, but that was mishandled by Lincoln IMO) so the loyalty was not to the Union.

3. The third reason is the reason that I think the South stayed relatively poor so long. The elites used the bondage of other human beings to make the fairly excrable lives of poor whites look better. The South was not a romantic place at all for those without money. It was malaria and miserable. Moonlight and magnolias was all well and good for the upper crust, but for the rest of us, it was not a long party, but rather a life of grinding poverty for most. However, those poor white folks could comfort themselves (and it was a true comfort) with their freedom.

Like Elder Sis, I have ancestors (from Northern Alabama and North Carolina) that fought in the Civil War. They did not own slaves (which does not make them saints, for the record). They were farmers, artisans and merchants. The merchants (the North Carolinians) were the wealthiest and probably joined for the "romantic" reasons (the one I'm thinking of actually joined a SC regiment and I say that because we have a letter of his talking about his disillusionment with war after being on the edge of the Petersburg crater - I apparently came within a couple of yards of not existing). The Alabamans didn't join until Alabama was "invaded". But the war was needed. I would argue that it was good for the South as a whole as well, because in the end, you know, only 100 years after the war, the South was finally forced to modernize its economy.

[Elder Sister]

Great post, Mlle Z.

I would also add that if you look at Mississippi - at the time of the vote for secession, the population was at around 791,000. Out of this number, 55% were slaves. Poor whites had either left (many went to Texas) or were not interested in the rich man's war. Those that did vote were strongly encouraged by their landlords to vote for secession.

Although some counties still refused - my home county being one of them.

[Former Lord of Winterfell]

2. But, you ask, why would non-elite Southerners fight for a cause that benefited them not in the least? I think there are at least 3 reasons. (A) The first is the pernicious view of "romantic" war that arose in the 19th Century. All things gothic and chivalric came back in vogue. By the 1860s, folks had generally forgotten the horrors of the Napoleonic struggles (which frankly didn't really touch the US). Crimea was a distant theatre that had poetry written about it. The "wars" that the US had been involved in generally had rather been frolics (if such things can be expressed as such). So war, in a way that I believe was just not confined to the elite, had seeped down as an admirable alternative (this thinking had its last gasp in WW1). (B ) The second is the way that the US was originally set up and the view to the future - the basic Jeffersonian v. Hamiltonian conflict. Was the United States a Union of separate sovereign states? Or rather was it a Union, subdivided into units of sub-sovereignity? The war decided that conflict but this basic understanding of what the country is and should be is the basis for (C ) the third reason. The third reason is that many Southerners felt themselves first citizens of their state and then citizens of the US (most famously R.E. Lee, but that was mishandled by Lincoln IMO) so the loyalty was not to the Union.

I would condense that to "they didn't like being told what they could and couldn't do by a bunch of damn yankees."

And I'm serious.

[Robin Of House Hill]

I think the more interesting topic is what would have happened if the South had simply been allowed to secede, and pressure brought to bear on them as a foreign country via embargo on any goods derived from slave labor. Maybe naval blockades as well, but no invasion of the South. Suddenly the Northern legislature wouldn't have to compromise in the slightest over anti-slavery laws. Slave owners could be prevented from traveling to the North unless they freed their slaves, etc.

An interesting idea, but for the fact that the North would never have risked a hostile country, allied with England on its southern border. For reasons I never have figured out, we've been pretty comfortable (except during the Polk administration with Canada to our north (probably because neither the US nor England wanted a third war). But an English ally to the south would have upset that balance and would have been unacceptable to the North.