[QUOTE=Lissa]
I think that racial relations would probably be better. The Civil War left a lot of residual anger. They couldn’t take it out on the north, so they ended up taking it out on the ex-slaves.
[/quote]
I find this to be an extremely dubious, not to say entirely facile, line of reasoning. It reminds me of the schoolyard bully who gets even more enraged when someone tries to stop him – “You’ll get kicked twice for standing up to me!”
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
By the time of the Civil War, there were no abolition groups in the states that made up the Confederacy.
[/QUOTE]
This author disagrees. His book claims that abolitionist groups were active in the upper south right up until the beginning of the civil war. This site has a listing for the American Abolition Society in North Carolina up until 1859. Texas was driving out and lynching abolitionists as late as 1860.
Perhaps most of the organized groups had disbanded out of fear of reprisal, but the setiments still existed.
[QUOTE=Lissa]
People were fast finding out that you could pay workers a lot less than it cost to feed, house and clothe them. Owners had an incentive to treat their slaves well because if one sickened and died, they were out of their invetment. Industrialists were discovering that employees were expendable-- there was always a supply of people desperate for work.
[/QUOTE]
Which is exactly the reason slavery had become less common in the north.
[QUOTE=Lissa]
Northerners didn’t eliminate slavery because they had high-toned moral values. They did it because they didn’t need slaves anymore anyway.
[/QUOTE]
I’m glad to see someone around here knows that.
[QUOTE=Lissa]
Once a slave’s labor is worth less than it costs to house him, the slaveowners would have gladly kicked them to the curb. They probably would have patted themselves on the back for their enlightened ethics, too. 
[/QUOTE]
Exactly. Even the dumbest of us southerners could figure out that a John Deere tractor doesn’t cost anything when it’s not working. Slavery was doomed to extinction by industrialization.
In case anyone is interested, there is some very interesting reading to be found here.
http://www.scv674.org/SH-Table.htm
If you’ll bother to read, you’ll find that secession was threatened by some states long before the Civil War. Not just by southern states and not over slavery.
Also, at that time slavery was protected by the Constitution. The North didn’t have enough drag to amend the Constitution. So a war over slavery wasn’t necessary.
Slavery was definitely a hot issue at the time. But, it wasn’t the reason South Carolina seceded. They seceded because of the passing of the Morrill Tariff.
“The original Morrill Tariff law passed and was signed into law by lame duck President Buchanan the Pennsylvania protectionist, on 2 March 1861, just before the Sumter incident, and was cheered in parts of the Northeast, and particularly in Pennsylvania for economic protection. Half of the iron of the country was made in Pennsylvania. United States federal tariff revenues had fell disproportionately on the South, which paid for 87% of the total collected. While the tariff protected Northern industrial interests, it raised the cost of living and commerce in the South substantially. It also reduced the trade value of their agricultural exports to Europe. These combined to place a severe economic hardship on many Southern states. Even more galling was that 80% or more of these tax revenues were expended on Northern public works and industrial subsidies, thus further enriching the North at the expense of the South.”
“The act sponsored by Justin S. Morrill and Thaddeus Stevens raised the average tariff from about 15% to 37% with increases to 47% within three years. This was reminiscent and even higher than the Tariffs of Abomination of 1828 and 1832, which had led to a constitutional crisis and threats of secession.”
" To the South it was viewed as a mortal threat, for Dixie exported three-fourths of all she produced and imported much of her manufactured goods, in spite of the enormous import tariffs that were already in existence. With Lincoln’s Morrill Tariff, the South would be forced to pay even higher prices for imports or find northern replacements, which would then help pay for the northern industrial revolution. Either way, southern wealth would be siphoned off into the pockets of northern industrialists or President Lincoln’s federal government."
I included these quotes from the linked article for those who wouldn’t bother to read through it for themselves.
The Civil war, like most wars, was fought over money and power. Those who had it wanted to keep it and those who didn’t have it, wanted to get it..
[QUOTE=alphaboi867]
The Conferates believed that the right to secede was implied in the U.S. constitution, to mention it the the Confederate constitution would imply that it needs to be mentioned and that they didn’t have the legal right to secede.
[/QUOTE]
The Confederates also believed (not without justification) that the U.S. constitution guaranteed the right to own slaves, but that didn’t stop them from both rephrasing some of the passages in the U.S. constitution to make them clearer (the mealy-mouthed “person held to service or labor” of the U.S. constitution’s fugitive slave clause became the forthright “slave or other person held to service or labor” in the C.S. constitution) and from adding some passages with no parallels in the U.S. constitution (“No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed”, where the U.S. constitution only mentions bills of attainder and ex post facto laws; and “The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired”, where the corresponding passage in the U.S. constitution only says that “The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states”.)
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
By the time of the Civil War, there were no abolition groups in the states that made up the Confederacy. Any big anti-slavery feeling in the South had been wiped out by that point. It was the pro-slavery side that was feeling morally superior.
[/QUOTE]
Yet there’s this “underground Railway” we’ve all heard about, that was helping slaves escape and flee to the free states – who made up that, if there was no anti-slavery feeling left in the South?
[QUOTE=jake1964]
Slavery was definitely a hot issue at the time. But, it wasn’t the reason South Carolina seceded. They seceded because of the passing of the Morrill Tariff.
[/quote]
Odd that South Carolina doesn’t mention that in its declaration of independence.
Moderator’s Note: This topic seems to be one where people inevitably are not content simply to give their own opinions on the question, but also to discuss and disagree with what other people are saying about it (not to mention all the side issues that get dragged in), so I think we’d better go ahead and move it from IMHO to Great Debates before the IMHO mods come in here and open up a can of whup-ass on us all.
[QUOTE=MEBuckner]
Odd that South Carolina doesn’t mention that in its declaration of independence.
[/QUOTE]
Nor does it specifically state “Y’all are tryin’ to take away our goddamn slaves!!”
“The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.”
“Thus were established the two great principles asserted by the Colonies, namely: the right of a State to govern itself; and the right of a people to abolish a Government when it becomes destructive of the ends for which it was instituted. And concurrent with the establishment of these principles, was the fact, that each Colony became and was recognized by the mother Country a FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATE.”
[QUOTE=Lissa]
Crap-- hit “submit” too soon. (I seem to do that a lot.)
I think that racial relations would probably be better. The Civil War left a lot of residual anger. They couldn’t take it out on the north, so they ended up taking it out on the ex-slaves.
I believe civil rights for African Americans would have come about at the same time as womens’ suffrage if not for the Civil War. I think the movements of the time which included a lot of free thinkers would have embraced civil rights for all if not for the concerns that suffrage would be blacklisted in the south.
[/QUOTE]
I agree. The industrial revolution would have created amarket-force end to slavery. The civil rights movement might have started in WWI instead of WWII.
[QUOTE=jake1964]
Even the dumbest of us southerners could figure out that a John Deere tractor doesn’t cost anything when it’s not working.
[/QUOTE]
Boy oh boy, it’s clear you haven’t worked with a John Deere (or any brand) tractor lately.
Maintenance costs on farm equipment are a substantial part of a farmer’s outlay, and a good farmer continues to do maintenance on his equipment all the time.
Plus the biggest costs of the tractor don’t stop when it’s not working. These are depreciation, insurance, and taxes. You pay those every single day, even during winter when much of the equipment sits in the machinery shed for months at a time. The bank, the insurance company, and the government still want their payments on that machinery.
Between the current, constantly rising price of gasoline, and the increasing costs of a tractor, we’ve had some farmers near our horse stable suggest that it would be cheaper for them to farm with horses than continue with tractors!
[QUOTE=t-bonham@scc.net]
Boy oh boy, it’s clear you haven’t worked with a John Deere (or any brand) tractor lately.
Maintenance costs on farm equipment are a substantial part of a farmer’s outlay, and a good farmer continues to do maintenance on his equipment all the time.
Plus the biggest costs of the tractor don’t stop when it’s not working.
[/QUOTE]
I apologize for oversimplifying. I realize that equipment costs do not “go away” during the farmer’s off season. However when you figure the amount of work one piece of equipment can do, it seems obvious that to clothe, feed and house the year round, enough human beings to do the same amount of work by hand would be far more costly.
Oops! Forgot to throw in the cost to purchase said humans.
[QUOTE=Lissa]
This author disagrees. His book claims that abolitionist groups were active in the upper south right up until the beginning of the civil war. This site has a listing for the American Abolition Society in North Carolina up until 1859. Texas was driving out and lynching abolitionists as late as 1860.
[/QUOTE]
I think you’re misunderstanding you’re second link there. The American Abolition Society was a national organization, headquartered in New York City. Daniel Worth (who was North Carolinian…he was a minister in Guilford County) was an officer in the society. Worth got in trouble for his abolitionist preaching, was sentenced to a year in prison, appealed it, and jumped bail and headed to New York City. I’m not saying there weren’t individual abolitionists in the south…there were, and even entire communities who were antislavery and Unionist, like the Nueces Germans, but they didn’t have much influence, and generally came to bad ends..
Let me put it this way…if I were an abolitionist publisher, I’d rather publish my newspaper in Boston or New York than Charleston or Jackson.
[QUOTE=jake1964]
Nor does it specifically state “Y’all are tryin’ to take away our goddamn slaves!!”
[/QUOTE]
“They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.”
[QUOTE=jake1964]
Slavery was definitely a hot issue at the time. But, it wasn’t the reason South Carolina seceded. They seceded because of the passing of the Morrill Tariff.
"The original Morrill Tariff law passed and was signed into law by lame duck President Buchanan the Pennsylvania protectionist, on 2 March 1861, just before the Sumter incident, and was cheered in parts of the Northeast, and particularly in Pennsylvania for economic protection.
[/QUOTE]
Your dates are disproving your case. Like you said, the Morrill Tariff was signed into law on March 2, 1861. South Carolina seceeded on December 20, 1860. In fact, one of the major reasons it had been able to pass the Senate was because most of the southern states, who were against it, had already seceded, and the southern senators had resigned (there was an attempt to pass it through the Senate in 1860, but it had been stopped by Sen. Hunter of VA., who controlled the Senate finance committee). So, the South didn’t secede because the Morrill Tarriff passed. The Morrill Tarriff passed because the South seceded.
BTW, I do like this part, from that document. First, talking about how the Republicans campaigned, they say:
Then, just a few paragraphs later:
I am puzzled by the contention that slavery would have died out because it just doesn’t make sense or it’s inefficient. I don’t know what world you people live in, but stuff that doesn’t make sense happen all the time.
By that logic, segregation would have been done away with voluntarily without having all that Civil Rights ruckus.
Why would the Montgomery public transit system discriminate against the very people who provided so much of their revenue? Right? It doesn’t make sense. It’s not efficient. But they did.
Well surely once a boycott started and the city realized how much revenue they were losing they would have capitulated right?
Wow. I’m surprised at how many people haven’t read Faulkner or Robert Penn Warren. I don’t think the southern slaveholders could have freed their slaves. Their neighbors wouldn’t have stood for it. Assuming that there was no Northern Migration (a pretty reasonable assumption considering Richard Wright’s experience with it), the social control of slavery would have been much more necessary in the eyes of whites.
Slavery made it so that every black man was assumed to have no rights. He might carry papers that said he had rights, but if he didn’t have those papers, he was assumed to be a slave. It was the lynchpin of a highly stratified society where, in many counties, blacks outnumbered whites until the 1920s. I’m sorry, but I don’t see a society so dependent on keeping one population down would suddenly turn around 180º once they were freed from the yoke of Yankee oppression. Frankly, the elites’ ability to keep blacks down was what kept them in power. When the POpulist movement came to the South in the 1880s and 1890s, it mainly served as an impetus for enacting Jim Crow Legislation.
And no one has given any explanation as to where the slaves would be freed. Would farmers be shooting them from their back porches, like feral cats?
[QUOTE=jake1964]
Slavery was definitely a hot issue at the time. But, it wasn’t the reason South Carolina seceded. They seceded because of the passing of the Morrill Tariff.
"The original Morrill Tariff law passed and was signed into law by lame duck President Buchanan the Pennsylvania protectionist, on 2 March 1861 . . .
[/QUOTE]
Amazing. They seceded on December 20, 1860, because of something that happened on March 2, 1861!
Interesting debate. I’m a little surprised, though, that no one has mentioned (that I saw) two of the most likely destabilizing forces that would have followed a CSA victory (I like the winning-Gettysberg scenario). One is that the Underground Railroad would have gotten a big boost. Without the principle that captured escapees had to be returned by the North to their owners, the appeal of making a break for it would have increased greatly. Second, there would have been a continuing series of revolts, rebellions and job actions by slaves - heck, they might have even hit on nonviolent resistance - which would have made slavery expensive socially and politically. Now, I can see that both forces would have cut two ways, making slavery less tenable and making Southerners more intractable in its defense, but I think these forces would have been important elements in the scenario.
[QUOTE=PBear42]
One is that the Underground Railroad would have gotten a big boost. Without the principle that captured escapees had to be returned by the North to their owners, the appeal of making a break for it would have increased greatly.
[/QUOTE]
I’ve always been surprised that Southerners never explored that argument when debating secession. Even in the event of a peaceful and friendly separation, and even if a handful of slave states had remained in the Union, it’s difficult to imagine that the North wouldn’t have repealed its fugitive slave laws–at least as they applied to foreign (Confederate) slaves. And it’s difficult to imagine that that wouldn’t have led to an exponential increase in the number of escapees.
I think Southerners convinced themselves, by their own propaganda, that the North was flouting the fugitive slave laws anyway, and that they could keep their own you-know-whats in place without any help from worthless Yankees. But if so, they were wrong. There’s no question that the need to conceal escapees, the operation of bounty hunters, and the need to reach Canada all made escape much more difficult.
Had the North followed Horace Greeley’s advice, and allowed a peaceful separation, but repealed its fugitive slave laws, the South might have been in for a nasty surprise.