How long would slavery have continued without the Civil War?

Great Debates
21

I don’t know if the question can be answered without knowing if the US had split into two countries.

Does the OP assume that there would be a non-Civil War, secession-free, US with slavery? That seems unlikely. The country was ready to split up over slavery even as far back as 1820. Jefferson and Adams both recognized that the sectional division over slavery was a huge problem.

One other problem the US would have faced by maintaing slavery was its relationship with Europe. Would Britain and France used their diplomatic influence to get the US to change its ways?

22

Which is why the war did happen and the states seperated, there probably was no other option and it was inevitable to happen around this time.

You have to remember that in much of the country and in Europe slavery was considered very bad. Slavery was definitely at an end and it was probably going to lead to war one way or another right around the same time frame.

23

I think the whole slavery/one crop /plantation system was in serious trouble, by the 1840’s. that is why the big landowners in the South wanted to extend slavery to the new western territories. Think about it: slavery is probably the least efficient labor source you can have…you needed overseers to beat the hellout of the slaves, to keep them working. In addition, the “Old South” was being ruined by single-crop agriculture-cotton and tobacco wore out the soils, and as yields declined,so did the economic pressures upond the landed gentry. By the late 1850’s most of the old southern families were deeply in debt (to Northern banks). Even the Lees (the first family of Virginia) were facing the loss of most of their estates. So the last act of the slave-owning aristocracy was actually one of desparation-iyt was either extend the system,or face their extinction.
And, after the Civil War. slavery actually became re-established, in a more onerous fashion…sharecropping. Under the sharecropping system, the “freed” slaves could work ona plantation…but they owned nothing. they paid rent for their cabins, and bought their clothes and food at a company store…most were’nt even paid in cash-just script. The only thing that broke the whole cycle of poverty in the South, was the industrialization in the area, which began in the 1940’s.
Barring the Civil War, is suspect that slavery would have survived till the 1890’s, at which time it would have collapsed on its own.

24

I was going to point that out…

Slavery in Brazil declined not only due to political or social pressures. The British banned slave commerce and would board slave ships. There were several outside pressures. Eventually in Brazil newborn of slaves were deemed “free born”… until finally under some pressure Princess Isabel signed the banning of slavery in Brazil.

I’d venture that the southern US being similar in some aspect to Brazil… but further away from Africa would have had a harder time keeping in fresh influxes of slaves… and probably would have lasted only a little longer than Brazil in maintaining slavery.

25

Is that how Japan justifies its occupation of Korea?

26

The United States outlawed international slave trading in 1808. However, by that time the U.S. slave population was large enough to be self-sustaining without importing slaves from abroad.

27

No, I don’t believe so.

28

I’m more pessimistic than all of ya’ll.

I think it’s possible that with increasing industrialization of the South, you would have witnessed only a gradual phasing out of slave labor. It would have first started off with factory owners contracting labor from slave-owners–in much the same way that munitions factories during the Civil War did. I can envision planters buying heaps of slaves for the sole purpose of renting out to factories. I can envision those planters’ eyes popping out of their heads with greed especially during lay-by time, when most of their “workforce”, including the children, would be rentable. The profits from slave renting would keep wealthy planters from balking too much at the changing agrarian economy. But it would make smaller farmers jealous and anxious.

With further industralization, factories could then afford to keep their own slave labor. Factories in the north were already paying their “free” workers below-substinence wages. But with slaves, there would have been the added costs of actually buying slaves, housing, and feeding them–as well as providing medical care. There’s also the cost of overseers and silent rebellion–like the destroying of tools and stealing of property.

But I think the benefits could have easily been perceived as outweighing the costs, as had happened for almost 300 years. For one, you would have a self-perpetating labor force. Every child born in your factory is yours for a lifetime. If the breeder slaves aren’t producing enough, just go down and rape a few of them. The resulting high-yaller ones might make good guards or semi-skilled laborers.

Also, with slaves, there would be no worry about unionization. No one would lobby in Congress for a mandatory 8-hr day on their behalf. No one would lobby on behalf of the school-deprived nigra children. Well, of course a few “do-gooders” would. But they would only be joining the effete chorus of abolitionists who would have been successfully ignored for centuries. On or offsite rabble-rousers would be immediately put down just like unionizers were up North.

Thirdly, the long-lived and deeply-entrenched seductiveness of white power would continue to flourish under this system. Poor whites would get massively shafted by this industralized slavery, but they’d be somehow convinced that the system was a-ok since it would be based on white supremacy. At least for awhile. And then maybe you’d see a mass migration of poor whites up north, seeking jobs where they wouldn’t have to compete with nigras. Perhaps the fruits of unionization (shorter work days, livable wages, child labor laws, etc.) would also be attractive to them. Maybe the Southern power structure would then concede some things to them–like free schools, apprencticeship programs for skilled jobs, or sharecropping arrangements–that would shut up their whining and keep them around.

Even if the slave-based industrialization system I envision had been viable, I think it would have been inherently unstable and bound to fall apart in a competitive open market. I think a factory employing free labor will be more productive and produce higher quality goods than a factory composed of involuntary workers. Also, bad employees can be fired with little or no lost of investment to the employer. Will beating a bad slave make him better or worse? If he dies or runs away, his owner has lost money. If he beats him, he’s lost money too (overseers cost money, and while one slave is being beaten, another slave is slacking off or running away). What if no one buys the lazy slave off his hands? What if the whole LOT of slaves is the same way!?

And who would want to buy a car made by a bunch of pitiable, miserable slaves? The heart of every good-hearted American would break every time they turned the ignition. On the other extreme you’d have people who wouldn’t trust a car made buy a bunch of stupid, childlike, animal-like, black-beast heathens. Buying clothes made out of the cotton picked by pickaninnies is one thing. Driving around in a dangerous piece of machinery made by pickaninnies, bucks, mammies, and Sambos is quite another. In the middle, you’d have people who would just be uncomfortable with the unfairness of slave labor, both for slaves and the people trying to compete with them. I could see free-labor factory owners taking advantage of these feelings by marketing their goods with “Made with Free Labor” stickers or urging people to “Support Free Shops”. “Free” would eventually turn into a code word for “white”. Slave-based factories would suffer tremenduously and then fall into oblivion.

I don’t think slavery would have been necessarily abolished by the federal law. Not for some time at least. I could see domestic slaves being used well into the 20th century. Maybe the use of factory slaves would be eventually banned, but what would be the impetus behind banning farm slaves or housekeeper slaves or handyman slaves? I’m thinking a type of low-level slavery would have been allowed for awhile. Perhaps there would be restrictions against enormous slave plantations and factories (further concessions to working-class whites and abolitionists), but personal slaves would still allowed. Then later you might find states choosing to ban slavery within their borders as a way of improving their image and economy. The Great Depression would speed up this process since people would become unable to buy and support slaves, and the idea of “employed” blacks in a sea of white unemployment would ruffle a lot of feathers.

Just think: With no Civil War and no Emancipation, there would have been no Booker T. Washington or W.E. Dubious. No Harlem Renaissance. No Malcolm X, MLK Jr. No James Brown singing “I’m Black and I’m Proud”. Hell, no rock n roll, blues, jazz, R&B, or Motown. No Civil Rights Movement. There would be no myth that the North was a bastion of Black Freedom because there would be slavery in the North as well as the South.

Things would be dramatically different. Black people would be dramatically different. Racism in American would be dramatically different. The history of this country would be dramatically different.

I think that slavery, in the absence of the Civil War, would have been around for another 80-100 years. By the mid-40s, I think the country’s black population would have gotten so big that it would have been damn-near impossible to keep them enslaved without causing a huge, violent war. Also, I think the comparisons between Nazi Germany and the US from WWII would be too big to be ignored. International pressures from Britain and even the USSR ("How can you proclaim yourself to be a free democracy when __% of your population is in bondage?") would further force change from the federal government. However, we’d be still living, some of us quite comfortable and satisfied, in the Jim Crow era.

29

I wonder if there would have been Jim Crow if the Confederacy had won. I always thought it was largely a backlash against Reconstruction after Johnson ended it.

I’ve long had the idea to write an alternative history novel set in the 1970s or 80s about the election of the first black president of the Confederate States of America. The history behind the story would be that the CSA won the war, but that slavery colapsed before too long anyway. Without the resentment caused by Reconstruction, blacks gained most of their political and civil rights gradually from the time immediately after the war to the 1950s, and without the migration of blacks to northern cities, were able to achieve gradually increasing political and economic success thereafter. By the time of the novel itself, there is still considerable racism and segragation in the culture, but no discrimination in the law itself. Blacks are finally begining to break into the upper eschalons of society in the CSA, and a young charismatic black politician (played by Barach Obama) suddenly finds himself thrust into the Presidency of a nation still struggling to overcome its internal divisions and enter the world stage.

I’ve never made any serious attempt to write fiction, so I doubt this book will ever be written by me. If anyone else want to try it, just promise me an acknowledgement in the Forward and a signed first edition if it gets published!

30

Here’s the point- the South had become backed into a corner, and the USA polarized by the issue. Economicaly advantageous is all very nice, but some dudes never back down. So- the economic arguement doesn’t old much water- the South was commited to Slavery as a way of life- not just a economic institution. In the USA- to an extent not eslewhere- slavery was also backed by racism. Blacks were slaves because “they were inferiour” or because “it was God’s will”.

So- how long has it taken deep rooted racism to become a minor factor in the South? Not until late in the 20th Century and some would argue not even now. So the South would not have given up Slavery voluntarily- good economics or no. Perhaps slavery would have been less common, few slaves used in the fields, maybe- but there is plenty of stoop/short hoe/Bracero work to be done even today, mind you. Read Grapes of Wrath and tell me that a well-cared for slave would have been much worse off than the Migrant farm worker.

My guess is that around WWI, the USA would finally have been able to get a “no new slaves born” law. There still might have been some “house” slaves as late as WWII. Likely the first law passed would have been a “no slaves bought or sold over state lines”, and that perhaps as early as the 1870’s.

If the CSA has successfully secceded- then around the same time, but there’d be some vestiges of slavery even later, and the racism would only now begun to lessen- maybe.

31

If there were no war, that assumes that the North would accept slavery and slave-made products as well as the rest of Europe.
Using that assumption, then it’s easier to believe that slavery would have lasted into the 20th Century.

Without slavery as an issue, what issue would an opposition party to the Democrats of the 1850s formed around? Western expansion? Imperialism? Most likely it would have been industrialization. There likely would have been a pro-agrarian Democratic party and pro-industrialization opposition party.

When the opposition party gained power, then slavery would have been doomed.