# If the confederates had not fired on Fort Sumter? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 13, 2021, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-confederates-had-not-fired-on-fort-sumter/932852 "2021-02-13T18:31:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2021, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-confederates-had-not-fired-on-fort-sumter/932852/41 "2021-03-31T15:21:38Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > But the South had a legitimate point at the time–you guys, you highbrows from Pennsylvania, and Vermont, and New York—you all had legal slavery up until it was not economically advantageous for you–and legal slavery was an implicit part of the agreement that we had and now you want to make that a federal issue that should be left to each state and territory to decide just like they do on all other local issues. > > It’s easy to be against something when you don’t depend on it. Much like how a heterosexual evangelical Christian can rail against the evils of homosexuality (while committing adultery on the side) and shake his head and clutch his Bible. It’s easy to condemn things that you have no interest in partaking of the benefits. This logic, this “point,” only holds if we endorse or otherwise uniquely privilege the perspective of slave masters over slaves. Because inasmuch as it’s easier to condemn slavery when your society doesn’t depend on it so directly, it seems even easier to support slavery when you and your descendants, as a minority even of the white population, will be the ones to benefit from it. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2021, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-confederates-had-not-fired-on-fort-sumter/932852/42 "2021-03-31T23:21:18Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > This logic, this “point,” only holds if we endorse or otherwise uniquely privilege the perspective of slave masters over slaves. Because inasmuch as it’s easier to condemn slavery when your society doesn’t depend on it so directly, it seems even easier to support slavery when you and your descendants, as a minority even of the white population, will be the ones to benefit from it. Absolutely. And the fact that the majority of people at that time in our history were blind to it makes it an interesting discussion point. As a point, they also didn’t care what women or Indians thought either, and most of the northern states that were against slavery certainly didn’t want blacks to _vote_. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2021, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-confederates-had-not-fired-on-fort-sumter/932852/43 "2021-03-31T23:30:19Z")
I think that the North would have nibbled slavery away. First no more slave states. Then repeal the Fugitive slave law. Next limits on slave auctions. Kids would be born free. Maryland would have gone along with those. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2021, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-confederates-had-not-fired-on-fort-sumter/932852/44 "2021-03-31T23:37:51Z")
Well, some CSA states would have gone their separate ways, like Texas for example- IMHO. Then, sure technology would have rendered mass slavery less and less cost effective. But still, today we use Migrant farmworkers for a lot of our Ag work. I dont know why people think that slaves wouldn’t be around. There is slavery today- not quite the same, true, but still slaves- in AG work, and as sex workers, etc. There were brothels of slaves, many of which were “high yellow”, I suspect there’d still be a need for them. Racist to the core, at least House slaves would have continued. They were a status symbol, something for rapists to rape, and for sadists to beat. And when you are a illiterate redneck, you had someone to feel superior to. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2021, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-confederates-had-not-fired-on-fort-sumter/932852/45 "2021-03-31T23:42:02Z")
At the end of his life he did: > **[Lincoln's Evolving Thoughts On Slavery, And Freedom](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/130489804)** > > Abraham Lincoln always thought slavery was unjust — but struggled with what to do once slavery ended. Historian Eric Foner traces how Lincoln's thoughts about slavery — and freed slaves — mirrored America's own transformation in The Fiery Trial:... _I think what would’ve happened would’ve been what happened during the Civil War. There would’ve been a lot of disagreement between Congress and Lincoln and they would’ve worked out an agreement. They would’ve worked out a policy that all Republicans could support. And it probably would’ve looked something like what was passed in 1866, the Civil Rights Act, which gave basic civil rights to the former slaves; the 14th Amendment, which put that principle of equal citizenship into the Constitution, maybe limited black suffrage._ _You know, at the end of his life, Lincoln publicly called for giving the right to vote to some blacks in the South, particularly the former soldiers. And this wouldnt have been as radical as the way Reconstruction eventually developed with full black suffrage, but maybe it would’ve stuck longer_. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2021, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-confederates-had-not-fired-on-fort-sumter/932852/46 "2021-04-01T02:57:26Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > From the founding, there was a conflict between the mercantile class in the North and the agrarian class in the South. We first see it at the Constitutional Convention and was present in the Hamilton v. Jefferson debates in the first Washington Administration. The nation nearly came to civil war several times in the years after that which was temporarily solved by the Missouri Compromise, the Nullification Crisis, the Compromise of 1850 and countless other things behind the scenes. > > In hindsight, war/secession was inevitable. Slavery became a flashpoint issue in this struggle. To continue to have political power, the South absolutely needed slavery to extend into the territories. It was essential at that time to an agrarian society as practiced in the United States. This “agrarian” versus “industrial” notion is used all the time when talking about the Civil War. Large areas of “the North” (especially in the Old Northwest, what we now call the Midwest) were “agrarian” (and still are, for that matter). What the South had was an “agrarian” economy, yes, in the sense that it involved growing things; it was a plantation economy, with slave labor being used to produce commodities (especially cotton, secondarily tobacco) for sale on global markets. For what it’s worth, “the North” did also produce agricultural commodities for sale on the global market; Northern farms exported substantial amounts of grain to Great Britain. _That_ form of agrarianism did not require declaring any human beings to be someone else’s property. Also, this statement “Slavery became a flashpoint issue in this struggle” implies that somehow the _real_ issue was something else, and slavery was just what “set things off”: This odd notion that there’s some fundamental conflict between “agrarian” regions and “industrial” regions (as if industrialists and factory workers don’t need to eat–or don’t want cloth, for that matter–and farmers don’t want to buy manufactured goods). The _issue_ was the conflict between an economy (both agrarian and industrial) using free labor, and a political system based on republicanism (and even increasingly democracy); and an economy heavily dependent on using slave labor for a specific form of plantation agriculture, with a political system that could not help but tend towards aristocracy or even autocracy. The “flashpoint issues” were more specific aspects of this fundamental division over slavery vs. freedom, like the issue of slavery in the territories and the _Dred Scott_ decision, John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, and an anti-slavery party winning a national election. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2021, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-confederates-had-not-fired-on-fort-sumter/932852/47 "2021-04-09T13:40:34Z")
Happy Appomattox Day, y’all. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2021, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-confederates-had-not-fired-on-fort-sumter/932852/48 "2021-06-08T14:28:51Z")
Today (June 8) is the 157th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s nomination by Republicans to be their 1864 Presidential candidate. Among the party resolutions: 1. Resolved, That it is the highest duty of every American citizen to maintain against all their enemies the integrity of the Union and the paramount authority of the Constitution and laws of the United States; and that, laying aside all differences of political opinion, we pledge ourselves, as Union men, animated by a common sentiment and aiming at a common object, to do everything in our power to aid the Government in quelling by force of arms the Rebellion now raging against its authority, and in bringing to the punishment due to their crimes the Rebels and traitors arrayed against it. [Prolonged applause.] [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-the-confederates-had-not-fired-on-fort-sumter/932852.md?page=2)