# American Civil War/When/how would the south have abolished slavery without it **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 10, 2014, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359 "2014-03-10T16:42:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Melchior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Melchior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melchior)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/61 "2014-03-11T20:05:52Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > They didn’t hate them, perhaps, but they did think that they were inherently inferior which is certainly racism. I don’t really believe that they did. They probably didn’t give it much thought. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/62 "2014-03-11T20:17:02Z")
> [@Sailboat](#): > > And then everything you say following turns out to have stemmed from slavery, except possibly “The southerners see the northern attempt at industrialization as a threat to their way of life,” – but I believe small farmers felt that way mostly because of the intense vocal propaganda\* by slaveowners who felt threatened…and thus _also_ because of slavery. First of all, I disagree with your comment that small farmers felt that way because of propaganda. While there may be some truth to that, the northern industrialists wanted to move the nation forward into an industrial economy, and felt that the southern agriculturalists were holding them back. It wasn’t just propaganda. The northern industrialists wanted to reshape the economy of the U.S. to go forward as an industrial nation, which meant screwing over the entire southern agriculturally based economy. While propaganda certainly fueled the fires, it wasn’t all just propaganda. The little southern farmers truly were threatened. Think about it this way. If slavery had been outlawed back in the 1700s, but the South had continued to hold on to its agriculturally based economy, the same basic conflict would have developed in the early 1800s as the economy of the north started shifting to industrialism. The industrialist opposition to the South had nothing to do with slavery. It was all about money. An industrial economy and an agricultural economy have different priorities, and most of the fights through the 1840s and 1850s in Washington stemmed from that. The northern industrialist position stems from money, plain and simple. It had nothing to do with slavery. Yes, slavery was involved, because the northern industrialists opposed the southern agriculturalists and the southern agriculturalists (at least the ones with the majority of the wealth and power) had slaves. But I think it’s a mistake to say that the northern industrialist position stemmed from slavery. Slavery was involved, but it wasn’t the root cause of their position. The root of the southern plantation position was slavery. They wanted to keep their slave-based economy and their slave-based political system and their slave-based way of life. The root of the northern industrialists position was money. They wanted their industrial economy to get stronger and take over the entire U.S. The root of the southern small farmers was fear of destruction by the northern industrialists. The root of the northern abolitionist’s position was slavery. They wanted it abolished, plain and simple. Only two of those four stem from slavery. The northern industrialist’s position didn’t stem from slavery, it grew into it as slavery became a tool by which they could assert power over the south. Likewise, the southern small farmer’s position didn’t stem from slavery, but grew into it as they allied with the plantation owners to fight back against northern industrialists. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/63 "2014-03-11T20:26:52Z")
> [@Melchior](#): > > I don’t really believe that they did. They probably didn’t give it much thought. Actually, they gave it a lot of thought. You really should do some research. To get you started: [The Mississippi Declaration of Secession](http://www.civil-war.net/pages/mississippi_declaration.asp). One of their beefs was that “[The North] advocates negro equality, socially and politically…” Then there is [The Cornerstone Speech](http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/) given by Alexander Stephens, the new VP of the CSA. Here is a choice quote from that very famous speech: “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition” Read the whole thing. It might be enlightening to you. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/64 "2014-03-11T20:32:32Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > They didn’t hate them, perhaps, but they did think that they were inherently inferior which is certainly racism. Most people, including most of the abolitionists, thought that the blacks were inferior. Even Lincoln thought they were inferior. He just didn’t think that those poor inferior black folks deserved to be enslaved. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/65 "2014-03-11T20:35:24Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Most people, including most of the abolitionists, thought that the blacks were inferior. Even Lincoln thought they were inferior. He just didn’t think that those poor inferior black folks deserved to be enslaved. This is true. What’s your point? I was simply refuting the claim that the Southern slave owners weren’t racist and that they didn’t even think about the issue both of which are clearly false. ---
**Author:** ![2sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/e47774/32.png) [@2sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2sense)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/66 "2014-03-11T20:36:51Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > But then the country starts to split. You’ve got the northern industrialists wanting to move the country towards an industrial economy, and they see the southern agricultural economy as slowing them down and hindering progress. The southerners see the northern attempt at industrialization as a threat to their way of life. Industrialists weren’t threatened by Southern agriculture. They needed the cotton and indigo the South produced and it was not only closer than anywhere else (lowering transportation costs) but also a place constitutionally forbidden to impose export taxes. In the North the South had a place to sell their resources as well as a market for their tobacco and rice. Economically they were integrated. > [@](#): > > Instead of working together to solve their differences, they instead solved their differences by whoever had the most seats in congress shoving their agenda down the other guy’s throat (250 years later we still do the same thing - we’re slow learners I guess). So when the industrialists have more power, they enact trade tariffs that benefit industry but hurt agriculture. When the agriculturalists have power, they go the other way. Each accuses the other of ruining the country, and as time goes on, each group gets more and more pissed off at each other. This buildup of anger is important. Without it, folks aren’t so willing to actually shoot at each other. One of the main contributing factors of the Civil War is the several decades of anger that built up over each side politically fighting each other. But they did work to resolve their differences. If you look at Dave Leip’s election maps you can see that there wasn’t a plain sectional divide. In 1800 the country was divided by section but that collapsed with the Federalist Party and the sections remained competitive for both Democrats and Whigs when those parties, carefully constructed across sectional lines, were formed. It’s not until 1860 that we again see the states so clearly divided as they were six decades earlier. There were sectional differences, mostly over new states, but most politicians, other than the South Carolina deadenders of Calhoun’s stripe, worked to paper over the disagreement. It’s not that they didn’t try. It’s just that eventually the demands of the planters became so extreme that Southern Whigs could no longer retain office if they continued to ignore that Northern Whigs were not actively pro-slavery and their party crashed paving the way for the Republicans. Certainly there are different interests for agriculturalists and manufacturers, most particularly over tariffs but the very reason the South remained so stubbornly agricultural, unlike the Eastern and developing Western states, was because of slavery. Charleston had some manufacturing but slavery favored unskilled work away from expensive (sabotagable) machinery. In the North canals were a good investments because locals, knowing they would benefit the most, could be trusted to eliminate political and legal obstacles. In the South there were plenty of elites who took a NIMBY approach to inroads of the commercial economy into the timeless life of the plantation. So yes, it wasn’t just slavery itself that caused conflict but also the economic results of slavery. > [@](#): > > As all of this is going on, the poor small farmers in the south (the ones who originally didn’t care for slavery) see the northern industrialists as trying to destroy all of agriculture, which means the small farmer along with the plantations, so they join forces with the slave owners, because if they don’t, then they lose their way of life too. Poor farmers in the South had no choice but to go along with what planters wanted because the South was so undeveloped that they couldn’t survive otherwise. There weren’t hamlets and towns every few miles like in the North where you could grab a drink, buy some supplies on credit, get a new horseshoe on your mule, get your wheat distilled into liquor, store your products until you find a buyer, find a buyer, like that. In the South that activity took place on plantations and if you didn’t kowtow to the local gent you were fucked. > [@](#): > > Now you’ve got the issue of the western territories. These are about to become states. Really, the folks in places like Alabama and Georgia really don’t give two hoots what the folks out west do. But they care how they vote. If the western states become free states, that shifts the power in congress to the industrialists and the southerners will soon find themselves legislated into bankruptcy. If the western states become slave states, then the agriculturalists will prevail and the industrialists will lose. This is why the western territories issue became so important. The abolitionists in the north are the only ones who really care about the slavery issue in the western territories. For everyone else it’s just about who controls Washington DC. People who live in Western states or have family and friends moving there care about slavery there. Those immigrants from the South want to establish plantations of their own. Those from overseas and from the North are adamantly opposed to competing with slave labor. And there is a moral issue, however diluted. Apart from economic considerations many whites, even thoroughly racist whites, believed slavery was wrong and were personally uncomfortable around it. > [@](#): > > So what if Lincoln had lost the election? I think the rest of your post is pretty accurate. Now the cat is out of the bag and with a political party willing to stand resolutely for the interests of the free states Northern Democrats are in deep shit. They can’t continue to carry water for their Southern brethren and have to either become explicitly anti-slavery or become unemployed. I figure most would go the former route. I believe that just standing up to the “Slave Power” would be enough for both Republicans and Democrats in the North though. There would be no need to ally with abolitionists, which both parties would continue to attack to highlight their own moderate position. But in the South, there is real fury. They realize they can no longer expect to dominate the federal government and that slavery will be condemned to wither and die as it is first contained in the rump South and eventually interfered with (a law prohibiting interstate commerce in humans would be a stake to the heart of slavery). They secede at some point, lets say with Democrat Jeff Davis as POTUS. But as each one leaves there are fewer fucktards in Congress and eventually they can impeach Davis or whatever and the war begins. ---
**Author:** ![BrokenBriton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4bbf92/32.png) [@BrokenBriton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrokenBriton)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/67 "2014-03-11T20:42:31Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > I think even the Old South would have stopped short of genocide. There were enough good people, with honest moral values, to have made that unlikely. The approach to POWs isn’t reassuring > [@](#): > > During a period of 14 months in Camp Sumter, located near Andersonville, Georgia, 13,000 (28%) of the 45,000 Union soldiers confined there died 14 months? [http://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/11andersonville/11facts1.htm](http://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/11andersonville/11facts1.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Melchior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Melchior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melchior)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/68 "2014-03-11T20:43:02Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Most people, including most of the abolitionists, thought that the blacks were inferior. Even Lincoln thought they were inferior. He just didn’t think that those poor inferior black folks deserved to be enslaved. I would like to think that Lincoln and the abolitionists did not believe that they were \*inherently \*inferior, but merely that circumstances had made them that way. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/69 "2014-03-11T20:49:59Z")
> [@hajario](#): > > This is true. What’s your point? I was simply refuting the claim that the Southern slave owners weren’t racist and that they didn’t even think about the issue both of which are clearly false. My point was that, as Melchior said, there is a distinction between racism and slave owning. Most of the abolitionists were racist. You seemed to be disagreeing with that point as well. ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/70 "2014-03-11T21:00:28Z")
> [@Melchior](#): > > I would like to think that Lincoln and the abolitionists did not believe that they were \*inherently \*inferior, but merely that circumstances had made them that way. You might like to think that, but everything I’ve read about Lincoln says otherwise. He seemed to believe that blacks were truly an inferior species. In the Lincoln-Douglas debates for example, he stated basically that even though he thought the blacks were inferior, that he did not believe that they should be denied the same right to freedom as whites. He also stated that he did not want blacks and whites to intermarry (basically, he said that just because he wanted the black woman to be freed didn’t mean he wanted to marry her). Douglas, by comparison, said that white men were superior and that he would never be in favor of granting citizenship to blacks, Indians (meaning American Indians) or “other inferior races”. There were some abolitionists who thought that all men were equal, even blacks, but they were the minority. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/71 "2014-03-11T21:07:03Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Mass agricultural slavery would have eventually become inefficient, yes. > > However if we posit a peacefully separated Confederacy, one wonders how long domestic slavery for the wealthy would have continued. It’s completely speculative of course but my own speculation is “potentially a long time.” Slavery was a pretty deeply imbedded feature of the culture of the wealthy oligarchy that dominated the south. > > Does slavery eventually end altogether? Probably. Does it end by the late 19th century? I’m less sure of that. Regardless I think everyone is an agreement that any Confederate society left to its own devices, strict legality of slavery aside, would have been a human rights nightmare for a very long time. Right. It’s possible that slavery would have stopped being economically within a couple of decades, but social factors would have kept it alive longer than that. And with reduced pressure from the outside, what followed - sharecropping and the equivalent of apartheid - would have been worse. > [@Melchior](#): > > There is a distinction between ‘racism’ and slave-owning. I don’t think the vast majority of plantation owners hated their slaves. Hate is utterly irrelevant. Slaves were beaten, raped, sold and deprived of their humanity. It doesn’t matter if the people who did those things to them also personally disliked them. In fact these days some researchers are doing a good job arguing that racism as we know it today was created as a justification for slavery: in order to make it acceptable to own people as slaves, it was necessary to argue that they were inferior. > [@](#): > > It was only after emancipation and the when the vast numbers of formerly employed slaves had nothing to do and no place to go that the troubles began. Nothing to do and nowhere to go? They needed work, which is why many of them became sharecroppers. “The troubles” were motivated by fear of black people and the disgust some white Southerns felt at the idea that these people were now their equals. > [@hajario](#): > > They didn’t hate them, perhaps, but they did think that they were inherently inferior which is certainly racism. > [@Melchior](#): > > I don’t really believe that they did. They probably didn’t give it much thought. They gave it plenty of thought. Some of them insisted they were doing their slaves a favor. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/72 "2014-03-11T21:10:52Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > My point was that, as Melchior said, there is a distinction between racism and slave owning. Most of the abolitionists were racist. > > You seemed to be disagreeing with that point as well. The slaveowners, by virtue of owning slaves, were far, far more racist than the abolitionist. The only action that is more inherently racist than enslaving people of another race is genocide. ---
**Author:** ![Melchior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Melchior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melchior)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/73 "2014-03-11T21:23:26Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > My point was that, as Melchior said, there is a distinction between racism and slave owning. Most of the abolitionists were racist. > > You seemed to be disagreeing with that point as well. I would also like to distinguish between two types of ‘racism’. One would be merely the conception that different ‘races’ vary in intelligence or something along those lines, and another might be the active detestation of certain races, but \*not \*because they are ‘inferior’. During WWII, Americans regarded the Germans in the latter way, the Japanese in the former way. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/74 "2014-03-11T21:23:44Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > That’s what they used to say about the Germans. > > Anyway, it doesn’t really matter how many good people with honest moral values lived in the South. They weren’t in control of the country. Political power in the slave states was concentrated in the hands of a small minority of wealthy land owners. And they had long since established that they had the legal and “moral” right to dispose of their property as they saw fit - that was, after all, the cause they fought a bloody and futile war to preserve. > > When the slave economy was in full swing, and a farm failed, the slaves at least would be easy to sell off to recoup some losses. There was a bottomless demand for more slaves, particularly once the British cracked down on the Atlantic trade. But if the bottom fell out of the slave market, because every one wants tractors, instead of slaves, what does the slaveowner do with his suddenly unprofitable and unsellable slaves? He’s not going to free them. Quite apart from the deeply ingrained ideology of racial superiority that says black people are bestial subhumans unfit for self governance, where are they going to go? There’s no jobs for them, and nowhere to live. They’d have to resort to banditry to survive, and no landowner is going to want to create bandit gangs to prey on his property. The only other option open to him is to put them down, like they would any other livestock that they can’t sell and can’t keep. I can easily imagine a small, short lived “slave removal” industry. “You take the missus and the children for a nice weekend in the city, while me and my boys handle your surplus slave problem. For a modest fee.” > > It’s said that the Nazis were the first people to industrialize genocide. The Slave South might have been the first people to commercialize it. While little is more popular on these forums over the past few years then talking about antebellum Southerners as if they have history’s monopoly on being barbaric I see little evidence from anything in the historical record to support this wildly fantastical alternative history. There were laws against killing slaves and many slaveowners had some sort of misguided paternalism going for their slaves. I simply don’t believe a genocide like you’re talking about would have happened. It’s wildly out of character with what would have been considered “in good taste” by the planter class in the South. Further the nonsense of it needs to be pointed out, sans the war and the forceful ending of slavery there wasn’t going to be one day where a light was switched and suddenly slavery is unprofitable so you now have millions of worthless blacks. It would have happened gradually and in different parts of the South at different times, and thus the large scale you’re talking about never would have happened and most likely the problem would have been dealt with ad hoc as was necessary. It’s impossible to predict how it would go but there would have been no point where there were both huge numbers of people still enslaved and all slave owners in agreement it was time to kill them off. ---
**Author:** ![Melchior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Melchior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melchior)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/75 "2014-03-11T21:30:44Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > The slaveowners, by virtue of owning slaves, were far, far more racist than the abolitionist. The only action that is more inherently racist than enslaving people of another race is genocide. Slavery is not the same thing as racism. They are separate things. Slaves in ancient times were not necessarily of different races. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/76 "2014-03-11T21:31:32Z")
> [@Melchior](#): > > Slavery is not the same thing as racism. They are separate things. Slaves in ancient times were not necessarily of different races. And when slavery in the US became race-based, American racism as we know it today came into being. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/77 "2014-03-11T21:36:53Z")
The mechanization of agriculture would have happened in the 1950s, up until then there were plenty of sharecroppers in the south who were essentially serfs. The South was devastated economically by the Civil War, but with a peaceful secession the slaveocracy would have stopped southern industrial development as inimical to the interests of the planters. They WANTED a quasi-feudal agrarian south. It would have taken a political revolution to overthrow the planters. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/78 "2014-03-11T21:37:39Z")
> [@Melchior](#): > > Slavery is not the same thing as racism. In the US, for all intents and purposes, it was. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/79 "2014-03-11T21:55:21Z")
Predicting when slavery would end with no Civil War and no overt Northern action to end it is very difficult because of the unique historical and legal reality in the United States. There are other places where powerful, vested interests had similar situations going on. The Austrian Empire with serfdom, the Russian Empire with serfdom, Brazil with chattel slavery. In both the Austrian and Russian Empires, there was a long history of absolutism and the monarch being able to do basically whatever they wanted, and in the case of both those countries that’s exactly what happened. The monarch declares by fiat that serfdom was over, and so it was. Some people were pissed, but the respective Emperors were far too powerful to be challenged by any of the powerful aristocrats who still had large numbers of serfs working their land. Additionally there were large political blocs in both countries that wanted serfdom to end for various reasons. One of the big impetuses in Russia was that Russia’s backwardness had been exposed somewhat in the Crimean War and it was felt the general labor market immobility involved with having so many bonded serfs was part and parcel of the backwardness that had make Russia weak. [In terms of numbers, the 1861 Emancipation Manifesto freed 23m people and depending on whether you count serfs owned by the Tsar/the State along with privately owned serfs prior to emancipation starting probably around half of all Russians were bound serfs–the state owned serfs were not freed until 1866. When the Russians did emancipation the legislation also provided the serfs the opportunity to buy land from the land owners at market rates (whether the landowner wanted to sell or not), but that provision was applied unevenly throughout the Empire–and it also meant household servant serfs were screwed as they were given their freedom but no land rights. In the United States Congress lacked the sort of power that a Russian or Austrian Emperor had and thus could not have easily just legislated an end to slavery. So without the Civil War you’d basically have to wait until such a large majority of the States had abolished slavery that you could pass a constitutional amendment, which probably would have taken years and years. Brazil followed a path of interest, in that during the 1870s when slavery started to rapidly become unprofitable in comparison to hiring very cheap immigrants there were mass manumissions, and a rapid increase in support for just ending the institution altogether. It isn’t unlikely we’d see a similar collapse in both slave economics and a support for freeing them in the United States. However in the United States it was harder, much harder, to manumit your slaves than in Brazil. Brazilian slaveowners were doing mass manumissions because they couldn’t afford to keep the slaves and really didn’t want to, so they sold off as much as they could to the parts of Brazil where people were still buying and freed the rest. In most U.S. States, at least in the South, to manumit your slave you had to provide the slave enough money to leave the State itself. This was precisely because the States didn’t want freed blacks running around. This is part of the reason when Robert E. Lee was executing the terms of his in-law’s will (which required freeing all the plantation slaves within five years) it took him the full five years to get it done, he had to settle all the plantation’s debts so the slaves were no longer legal collateral and he had to raise funds sufficient to be able to legally manumit them and give them money for passage out of Virginia as required by Virginia law. I don’t really know what would have happened, but assuming slavery rapidly becomes unprofitable in the 1870s as it did in Brazil it seems the most likely changes would be in Southern State laws and possibly Federal policy to have effected manumission combined with mandatory resettlement out into the vast West where we had lots of productive land going unworked and not a lot of people. But I could see slavery itself remaining legal on the books well past the 1870s because of the aforementioned limited legal authority of Congress and also the general conservatism in the United States means even the States in the South would remain leery of outright banning slavery even as it became a rare practice. I could see the United States continuing on like the Ottoman Empire, which had lots of “domestic” slaves well into the 20th century. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2014, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359/80 "2014-03-11T21:57:24Z")
> [@Melchior](#): > > Slavery is not the same thing as racism. They are separate things. Slaves in ancient times were not necessarily of different races. We’re talking about slavery in the US, which was race-based, and based on the “truth” of white supremacy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/american-civil-war-when-how-would-the-south-have-abolished-slavery-without-it/683359.md?page=5)