[QUOTE=Freddy the Pig]
Had the North followed Horace Greeley’s advice, and allowed a peaceful separation, but repealed its fugitive slave laws, the South might have been in for a nasty surprise.
[/QUOTE]
Or they might have used it the way Castro uses our policy on Cuban immigration. They might not have minded blacks going North so much if they couldn’t come back.
[QUOTE=saoirse]
Or they might have used it the way Castro uses our policy on Cuban immigration. They might not have minded blacks going North so much if they couldn’t come back.
[/QUOTE]
I think the system did work that way, actually, before the war. The Underground Railroad drained off a relatively small number of the most ambitious and rebellious slaves, and slaveholders could live with that, although they wouldn’t have admitted it in a million years. Just as Castro can live with a relatively small number of his most disgruntled citizens fleeing.
If a person could have obtained freedom merely by reaching the North, though, I’m not convinced that the “leakage” wouldn’t have become a flood.
Just the same, I’m not aware of any white Southerner even worrying about this point in the debates over secession. It’s possible that raising it would have been considered uncouth, because it would require one to acknowledge that slaves didn’t enjoy slavery.
Years ago, i visited a South Georgia planatation (Hofwylde House)-it is near the Savannah area. It was a rice plantation, and operated from about 1740-1920. Basically, it was a huge estate, and grew rice, using slave labor. the owners were pretty wealthy, but once rice-growing began to carried out in texas and california, the estate went into irreversible decline. The slaves were (puposefully) kept ignorant/uneducated, and they were still using extremely primitive methods, so there was no way this business could have competed (with non-slave operations elsewhere). The owners gave the estate to the state…it just shows you that slavery was a dead end, and could not have lasted past 1900 or so.
[QUOTE=Lissa]
It makes more economic sense to hire people. With slaves you have to raise them, feed them, pay for their medical treatment, educate them enough to be able to work, clothe them, house them, etc. You had to treat them with at least a modicrum of humanity because a brutalized slave doesn’t work as hard. If one died, you would have to buy a new one and a healthy, biddable slave didn’t come cheaply.
There was a never-ending supply of immigrants who would work for pittance wages. The worker had to bear the costs of his own upkeep. You could be as mean to them as you pleased and if one of them got sick, you could just fire them and get a new employee with a minimum of fuss.
[/QUOTE]
If the whole fuss over Fogel and Engerman proved anything, it is that it was nowhere near that simple.
Moreover, this is one question where one can reasonably say that most of the experts take a rather different view. The poll of members of the Economic History Association in 1995 asked respondants whether they agreed with the statement, ‘Slave agriculture [in the USA] was efficient compared with free agriculture. Economies of scale, effective management, and intensive utilization of labor and capital made southern slave agriculture considerably more efficient than nonslave southern farming.’ The findings were that 48% of economists and 30% of historians agreed, with a further 24% of economists and 35% of historians agreeing with caveats. Robert Whaples, ‘Where Is There Consensus Among American Economic Historians?’, Journal of Economic History, 55,1 (1995), p. 141.
[QUOTE=ralph124c]
…it just shows you that slavery was a dead end, and could not have lasted past 1900 or so.
[/QUOTE]
An economic dead end. As a way of institutionalizing and preserving white supremacy, it was the most efficient system possible.
[QUOTE=Freddy the Pig]
Just the same, I’m not aware of any white Southerner even worrying about this point in the debates over secession. It’s possible that raising it would have been considered uncouth, because it would require one to acknowledge that slaves didn’t enjoy slavery.
[/QUOTE]
That was actually an argument made by Missouri Unionists against secession (Missouri, being surrounded by three sides by free states, was very sensitive to the need for a fugitive slave law.)
[QUOTE=APB]
If the whole fuss over Fogel and Engerman proved anything, it is that it was nowhere near that simple.
Moreover, this is one question where one can reasonably say that most of the experts take a rather different view. The poll of members of the Economic History Association in 1995 asked respondants whether they agreed with the statement, ‘Slave agriculture [in the USA] was efficient compared with free agriculture. Economies of scale, effective management, and intensive utilization of labor and capital made southern slave agriculture considerably more efficient than nonslave southern farming.’
[/QUOTE]
The difference is mechanization. If the farmer is hiring labor but they’re still using hand tools there wouldn’t be an appreciable difference. The economic benefit comes into play when the farmer gets rid of his slaves and buys a gin with the money he saved from not having to take care of them.
I think it’s possible that a victorious CSA would have lasted up to WWII, and maybe sided with the Nazis. Wouldn’t that be an ugly scenario? If they won, they would still have slaves today.
Thanks to MEBuckner for the earlier link to the confederate constitution.
Look at all these references to slaves in them, There are 10 references to slaves, almost as many as there are references to citizens. Those folks were clearly trying to lock slavery so deep in their constitution it couldn’t be changed. They would need to trash the constitution and rewrite it in a constitutional convention, something exceedingly hard to do,
Article I Sectiom 2. (3)
Article I Sec. 9. (I)
Article I Sec. 9. (2)
Article I Sec. 9. (4)
Article IV Sec. 2. (1)
Article IV Sec. 2. (3)
Article IV Sec. 3. (3)
These are not an easy things to back away from, expecially since it would surely be seen as the “wisdom of our founding fathers”.
[QUOTE=Lissa]
The difference is mechanization. If the farmer is hiring labor but they’re still using hand tools there wouldn’t be an appreciable difference. The economic benefit comes into play when the farmer gets rid of his slaves and buys a gin with the money he saved from not having to take care of them.
[/QUOTE]
The problem is, he wouldn’t neccesarily have the money to do that. I think you’re first, overestimating the amount of cash southern farmers had, even the rich ones, and second, overestimating the cost it took to keep a slave. Slaves generally ate the food they grew themselves and were clothed in the clothes they made themselves. It really wasn’t that much of an outlay on the plantation’s books, and mechanization wasn’t really that hmuch more efficient than slave labor.
Here’s an online article you might be interested in, comparing the societies and economies of pre-civil war Franklin County, PA and Augusta County, VA. From the article:
Regarding slaves escaping from the Confederacy: The excellent one-book summation of the Civil War, Battle Cry of Freedom, mentions a southern slave owner coming under white flag into a Union camp early in the war and requesting his escaped slaves back. He was shocked when the Union commander refused to return them, saying that the Fugitive Slave Law was a law of the United States of America, which Virginia was claiming to no longer be a member of. Apparently the slave owner had simply taken for granted that all civilized men saw the absolute necessity of making sure slaves weren’t permitted to escape. So perhaps the southerners truly didn’t imagine that the North would become a haven of escaped slaves if the South seceeded.
If the Confederacy and the Union had reached a negotiated truce such as in the post-Gettysburg scenerio, the Confederacy would almost certainly have demanded as non-negotiable a treaty calling for the return of escaped slaves. The Union might have felt like telling them “You be damned”, but if it was part of the price of a desperately desired truce, the North might have acceeded to it.
Regarding the perpetuation of slavery: I’m pretty sure that for cultural reasons the South would wanted to keep slavery forever, but eventually fewer and fewer southerners would have been able to make slaveowning profitable. I think it might have been modified into something closer to serfdom, where every person of color was required to be the ward or dependent of a white; and flat-out ownership would have been replaced by some legal fiction such as lifetime-indenture contracts. Most slaves would be handymen or domestics, and few people other than those rich from some other source of income would have owned more than one or two slaves.
Lumpy, with all due respect, your scenario isn’t plausible. Suppose the Confederates win Gettysberg. Even the most ringing victory doesn’t place the CSA in a position to conquer the North. At best, it convinces the North that the fight isn’t worth the candle. It tells the South not to let the door hit its ass on the way out and withdraws its troops. Are you seriously suggesting the CSA would have continued hostilities to force a right-of-return? Sorry, I don’t see it.
[QUOTE=Walloon]
My guess is that slavery would have been abolished by the 1880s, as it was in Brazil, which like the South, had a agricultural economy heavily dependant on slave labor.
[/QUOTE]
Between 10,000 and 60,000 southern confederates moved to Brazil after the war to carry on their way of life and their Dixieland. They (Confederados) must be considered the hardcore elements, yet they freed their slaves before the rest of Brazil.
[QUOTE=Rune]
Between 10,000 and 60,000 southern confederates moved to Brazil after the war to carry on their way of life and their Dixieland. They (Confederados) must be considered the hardcore elements, yet they freed their slaves before the rest of Brazil.
[/QUOTE]
This is true, although the actual numbers are kind of hard to pin down. Still, thye weren’t holding slaves in their own society, with a constitution designed around protecting slavery (they inserted a protection into Article I, sec 9. putting slavery on the same level as freedom from bills of attainder). For better or worse the Confederacy wouldn’t have become another new world “banana republic,” so the ability of the government to make fundamental changes in society would have been curtailed.
[QUOTE=jake1964]
Nor does it specifically state “Y’all are tryin’ to take away our goddamn slaves!!”
[/QUOTE]
MEBUckner already pointed out that this is incorrect, but I wanna drive it home. Not only do they say, “Y’all are tryin’ to take away our goddamn slaves!!” but they add, “And this is the reason why we’re seceding!” The last half-dozen or so paragraphs of the document deal exclusively with this question:
No tarriffs mentioned. They were all about the slavery. They were very clear on the idea that slavery was going to be outlawed soon, and they were willing to risk their lives, their property, and their historical reputation on preventing that.
Daniel
[QUOTE=PBear42]
Lumpy, with all due respect, your scenario isn’t plausible. Suppose the Confederates win Gettysberg. Even the most ringing victory doesn’t place the CSA in a position to conquer the North. At best, it convinces the North that the fight isn’t worth the candle. It tells the South not to let the door hit its ass on the way out and withdraws its troops. Are you seriously suggesting the CSA would have continued hostilities to force a right-of-return? Sorry, I don’t see it.
[/QUOTE]
They would have at least made the demand. At the end of the war, when the CSA was a month or two from total defeat, a delegation was sent to the north that still expected to be able to get a negotiated return to the pre-war status quo. (!) The Confederates were nothing if not sure of the divine righteousness of their position. Without getting into the specifics of a negotiation that never happened, the South apparently expected the sun, the moon and the stars as it’s rightful due. It comes down to how desperate the North would have been after a defeat at Gettysburg. If the South could bluff them down, the North might have signed a truce that would have amounted to the “shameful surrender” that anti-secessionists in the North refused to contemplate in 1860.
[QUOTE=Oy!]
But thanks for the compliment that it was interesting, Walloon! My default assumption is that, if people read my posts at all, they are bored silly!
[/QUOTE]
Not at all. Sorry I didn’t get to this thread sooner, but I’ve spent so many years studying the Civil War, I’m almost bored with the subject. I finally had time today to scroll thru and snagged on your post – very thoughtful, obviously well-researched, and carefully reasoned.
I long ago decided to take the late Shelby Foote at his word when he opined that two facts about the American Civil War were virtually pre-ordained when the U.S. Constitution was signed: That it would start, and its outcome. I don’t remember his exact words, but it was something along the lines of, “It’s like saying ‘if the sky were green.’ Not only is the sky not green, the very laws of nature dictate that it can never be green, under any circumstance.” Something like that.
Gettysburg could have ended differently, perhaps. If Pettigrew’s troops had withdrawn instead of engaging; if Buford’s cavalry had been able to summon infantry support; if Lee had listened to Longstreet; if Pickett had focused on the Union Left instead of the center; if Chamberlain had lacked the heart to counter-attack. Almost any of those would have resulted in a different outcome at that moment.
Ultimately, however, most scholars agree that we’d still have ended up with the United States we have today, or something very close to it.
Still, it is fun to speculate, isn’t it?
[QUOTE=Captain Amazing]
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.
[/QUOTE]
Mea Culpa :smack:
Lincoln’s election provoked secession of the Southern states
On November 16, 1859, Davis addressed the Mississippi legislature. He declared that if a Republican were elected President in 1860 that disunion would be a necessity and he would tear Mississippi’s star from the American flag. Veteran Mississippi unionist Henry S. Foote agreed that secession was certain if Lincoln won. Even moderates thought this to be so. Alexander H. Stephens, who initially opposed secession, predicted that South Carolina would secede, that the Gulf states would follow and that after some hesitation by the border region, war would begin.
Lincoln had been elected on a pledge to increase the economic prosperity of the country and his proposal involved tariffs. Lincoln had indicated that he would sign the Morrill Tariff bill should it not be passed before his inauguration on 4 March 1861.
When the election of Lincoln was certain, much of the Lower South gave way to a frenzy of secession.
Waitta minnit! The Civil War was fought over a stupid tariff!? Are you kidding me!? Crap!
::marches to the filing cabinet, hauls out twelve years’ worth of research, starts shredding::
This really sucks! I have GOT to get a real life! Fuckin’ Shelby Foote – probably wasn’t really from the South anyway!
On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated in Washington, D.C. In his inauguration speech he made several statements that would reveal his feelings about slavery, secession and the value of the South and her revenues. Lincoln, in a speech at Peoria, Illinois in 1854 said, “The slaveholder has a legal and moral right to his slaves.” Lincoln again restated his views in his in 1861, "I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
Another statement made by Lincoln during his inaugural speech was that he would not use any force against the rebelling states except to “collect the imposts,” or taxes. This statement is more revealing of Lincoln’s true motives than any other statement that he made. He had once been asked how he could advocate coercion. His reply was “What is to become of my revenue in New York if there is a ten per cent tariff at Charleston?”
This referred to the Confederacy’s ten per cent tariff on imported goods, which was much less than the U.S. tariff.
–
Other excerpts from Lincoln speeches and letters –
“If all earthy power was given to me, I would not know what to do as to the existing institution of slavery”, 1854 speech in Peoria, IL.
“I am not in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office…”, campaign speech September 15 1858
“I am a little uneasy about the abolishment of slavery in this District of Columbia…”, letter to Horace Greeley March 24 1862
“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it…” letter to Horace Greeley August 22, 1862
–
In Lincoln’s inaugural address he maintains that the Union was “unbroken,” denying that the Southern States had a Constitutional right to secede from the United States on their own free will. This conflicts with a speech that he made in 1847 in which he said, “Any people whatever have a right to abolish the existing government and form a new one that suits them better.”
In 1861 when the avowed object of the war was the restoration of the Union, it was said by some English leaders in Parliament, “Make your war one against slavery and you will have the warm sympathy of the British public”. However when William E. Forster said in the House of Commons that he believed it that slavery was the cause of the war, he was answered with jeers and shouts of “No, no!” and “The Tariff.”
Lincoln would abandon the save the union theme for one of free the slaves in 1863 in order to secure a chance at reelection in the coming year.
–
Quotes from others.–
Earl Russell, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, said “The Proclamation… professes to emancipate all slaves in places where the United States authorities cannot exercise any jurisdiction… but it does not decree emancipation… in any states occupied by federal troops.”
The New York World editorialized that the President has "proclaimed emancipation only where he has notoriously no power to execute it. The exemption of the accessible parts of Louisiana, Tennessee and Virginia renders the Proclamation not merely futile, but ridiculous.
The London (England) Spectator said “the Union government liberates the enemy’s slaves as it would the enemy’s cattle, simply to weaken them in the conflict. The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States.”
U.S. General Ulysses S. Grant said “Should I become convinced that the object of the government is to execute the wishes of the abolitionists, I pledge you my honor as a man and a soldier I would resign my commission and carry my sword to the other side.”
Governor William Sprague, of Rhode Island, said “We had to take a lot of abuse in return for an endorsement of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. We were hissed in the streets and denounced as traitors.”
In “Short History of the United States” Channing says “The Union Army showed the greatest sympathy with McClellan for the bold protest against emancipation.”
–
I will bow out of this discussion with one statement and one question.
I do not condone the practice of slavery in any form or fashion and am not attempting to defend slavery itself.
However, if opinions as to what actually caused the War Between the States weren’t agreed upon in the 1860’s, how can we know for sure today?
Thank all of you for allowing me to participate. 
[QUOTE=jake1964]
“I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.”
[/quote]
But as Douglas famously replied in his debate with Lincoln: “You claim to have no design against slavery where it exists; how then do you propose that it should ever come to an end?”