One suggestion I’ve heard floated was that the United States could have used the land it acquired from the Louisiana Purchase or the Mexican War as collateral to pay for an emancipation program. Basically pay the slave owners for their slaves with bonds which would spread out the payments over several years. And then finance the bond payments by selling off land.
The problem is that this would have been virtually impossible to sell politically. You’re basically talking about a huge payout program to wealthy people in one section of the country. Wealthy people in the rest of the country and poor people in general would complain that they weren’t getting any government money. The only way to sell such an idea would be by comparing it to the cost and devastation of the war - but the program would be designed to prevent the war so it wouldn’t exist to use as a comparison.
So economically it was possible - the assets existing. But politically, it was never going to happen.
One theory is that the only reason the south was able to maintain a slave-based economy was because it was politically connected to the rest of the country, which had a growing non-slave economy. Think of it as a marriage where the husband is a business executive and the wife runs a boutique - the wife is only able to keep the boutique going because her husband’s salary is paying for all of the couple’s household expenses.
Secession was the equivalent of a divorce. Even if the United States had let the southern states go peacefully, the CSA was doomed because it didn’t have the resources to finance the running of a country.
It was important, from a Congressional voting standpoint, for the slave owning states to push the option of slavery into the soon-to-be western states or else they would have been out-voted in Congress. States were being admitted two at a time to balance Congressional voting. Lincoln’s election finally convinced the southern states that there was no longer any point in trying to get along with the North. Buh bye.
Southern states literally rejected all Federal/Northern/United States laws, regulations, and authority. They chose to create their own central government and live independently. There was no popular peoples demand in the North to force the southern states to rejoin the Union.
South: We don’t like you.
North: We don’t like you either.
South: We’re leaving.
North: Goodbye.
South: We’re serious about this.
North: Great. Just stop bitching about it.
South: Fine. Oh, by the way, we shot up your fort.
North: OK, that does it. Now it’s ON. Somebody hold my beer and watch this.
Tensions were high on both sides and there is no reason to believe that “someone” wouldn’t have started shooting at the other side and recieved return fire, which is the reason the Civil “WAR” started. If the South hadn’t shelled Ft Sumter, if the North hadn’t fired back, someone else would have shelled/defended some other fort and the Civil War would have started at that point in time.
What about the debts that the entire Union had entered into, such as the large amount of money that was spent to pay off the huge debt that Texas had accumulated during its days as a Republic? In my opinion, an attempt to secede peacefully would have to involve a concrete proposal to settle that issue (and other issues as well).
Not sure about that, the best recommendations do not insist on going cold turkey and the eventual change is not as economically damaging as the contrarians claim.
Of course the thing here is that I see the change to other fuels as a bad example to use.
IMHO If there was something that would had prevented the civil war it would had been to avoid the Mexican-American war. The addition of the territories taken from Mexico then lead to the eventual problem of what states would become slave ones and when California turned in the end non-slave that really accelerated the run to conflict.
So slavery was indeed seen as an unfair economical practice when mining was concerned, and I do agree with Deeg on this one, slavery was dragging the economy of the south down.
That about face of former slave state citizens now in California told the slave states that the writing was on the wall and secession was seen as the only way to continue with the peculiar institution.
I’m not in any way trying to make an absolute moral, ethical or political judgment, especially not from 150 years later.
The south’s economy was driven by slave power; taking it away would have shaken things up badly, and many would have lost some or all of their wealth. Wherever you take it from there, it’s plenty of explanation for why the southern states banded together in secession and fought a bloody war to Preserve Their Way of Life.
As much as I admire Mr. Lincoln (and I do), I think his obsession with keeping the Union together (which, by his own admission, was paramount) was a weakness, and a near-fatal flaw. If he had let the southern states secede, the North would have still been a viable country and military conflict could have been avoided.
It would have perpetuated slavery for a while, but I think that world opinion and economic changes would have eventually doomed it – after all, the Industrial Revolution was on the horizon – and a reconciliation between North & South might have been possible 50-100 years later.
My guess is you mean “its original borders.” (possessive, territorial)
“it’s (not possessive) original boarders” would be someone who rents a room or invades a ship.
If I am correct, I don’t know that the Confederacy would be all that hostile. Their stated intention was to separate and go their own way, since it was doubtful they could force their will upon the northern states, nor did they want to. Their hostility (attacks on Fort Sumter) was generated by the Union’s lack of concession (You assholes! We gonna teach you muhfuckers a lesson!). If they had been left alone, they might not have been that great a threat.
Yeah, and if we had just given Japan whatever it wanted, it wouldn’t have been driven to bomb Pearl Harbor.
The Confederacy had unreasonable demands and it attacked the United States when we refused to give in to their demands. That’s about as hostile as you can get.
When was Japan a part of the US? Did I miss that memo?
The Confed’s demands were to be left alone and not be part of the Union. Doesn’t seem all that unreasonable (reprehensible, maybe), but the Union wouldn’t allow it. Thus, the attacks. Which caused which?
You cannot use 21st century morals in relation to 19th century folks, moral values change over time. Industrialization was making the Economics of Slavery non-viable but it had not happened yet. Most in the North did not think of Blacks as equal either socially or intellectually, Lincoln surely did not( he may have changed his views somewhat toward the end of his life, there is much debate about this with Lincoln scholars).
The North went to war to preserve the Union and the North’s Economic interests. If the War was sold to the public as a war to free the slaves very few would have shown up to volunteer. This might be informative.
The Siege of Fort Sumter was not started by the “Confederacy” but by some locals, including teenagers from the Citadel, Hot Head Mexican War Vets and Students of the South Carolina War College, to prevent its resupply and completion. No one in the new Confederate Government authorized this. This was part of the dispute about how Federal property would be divided up after succession, Teenagers and Old Men did this on their own.
engineer_comp_geek pointed out that for the South it was all about slavery, economics was indeed a factor for the north, but even there ECG mentions that eventually the pigheadness of the south made slavery a big part of why the war was fought for the North.
Egads! I am wrong about this. I read the first part but not the rest. I based my statement on what I was told by a Citadel/West Point grad that I used to know. Mea Culpa, sorry to be spreading ignorance. I fully retract my misunderstanding and post.
