# So what was the North fighting for? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 11, 2020, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-north-fighting-for/917800 "2020-08-11T13:10:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2020, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-north-fighting-for/917800/142 "2020-09-29T23:07:10Z")
Southern racism would never give up their slaves until we pried their cold dead hands off the whips and chains. Which is exactly what we did. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2020, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-north-fighting-for/917800/143 "2020-09-29T23:12:10Z")
What were American soldiers during WWII fighting for? Each soldier probably had his own answer, but I think the big picture answer is they were fighting for America. Same with Union soldiers during the civil war, they were fighting for America. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2020, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-north-fighting-for/917800/144 "2020-09-29T23:39:10Z")
> [@Strassia](#): > > The problem with thinking the Confederacy would give up their slaves is ignores that the CSA was not a monilithic organism run by a hive mind focused on the overall health of the nation. > Most slaves were owned by major slaveholders whose single greatest asset was their slaves. Slaves were mortgaged and leveraged as colleteral. The chattel slavery system may have hampered economic growth of the nation as a whole and even been better for the majority of slaverholders over time as it transferred the costs of controling the black population to the state, it would have cut the fortunes of many of the powerful members of the government and their backers in half. > > If there is one thing that we see repeated in the history of capitalism, it is that most capitalists will gladly trade the health, happiness, and lives of their descednts for a short term advantage over the course of their own lives. I agree with much of what you wrote. The southern political and economic system was dominated by plantation owners and they were heavily committed to keeping slavery going. But I think they were playing a losing hand. The plantation system was already dying before 1860. Most plantation owners weren’t able to keep solvent by agriculture. Cotton production destroyed soil. Plantations owners were actually in the business of breeding and selling slaves - and to do that they needed new territory as a market. So Virginian plantation owners sold slaves to Georgian settlers. And when those Georgians had their plantations up and running, they sold slaves to settlers in Mississippi. And later Mississippi sold slaves to Texas. Southern politicians were fanatics about national expansion. They would talk about America acquiring from Mexico and Central America and the Caribbean - and that need for new plantations as a market for their slaves was the reason why. This was the reason why they saw the Republican policy of closing the territories off the slavery as a threat. Slavery couldn’t survive without expansion. But expansion wasn’t going to happen if the Confederates had won the war. The United States wouldn’t have stood by if the Confederates tried to conquer Mexico and the Caribbean. Nor would the European powers, which had their own designs on that territory. And there were other factors working against the plantation owners. I already mentioned that European countries developed their own cotton growing regions during the war. As you noted, plantation owners were always in debt and borrowing money against the collateral of future harvests. One of the first thing the plantation owners did when they declared independence was repudiate those debts - which was a short term windfall but which would have made it very difficult for them to find anyone willing to lend them more money after the war. And the industrial revolution was going to happen regardless of how much the plantation owners hated it. The Confederates would have had to develop its own industrialist class and be completely dependent on foreign industry. So the plantation owners were heading for a crash, even if the Confederates won the war. They would not have been able to dominate Confederate politics so their interests would not have been a priority the way they had been in the southern states before the war. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2020, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-north-fighting-for/917800/145 "2020-09-29T23:44:23Z")
> [@urbanredneck2](#): > > I think slavery would have ended eventually from a combination of mechanization and societal pressure. Harry Turtledove addressed this possibility in one of his book series, which was based on the premise of a Confederate victory. In the world he described, when mechanization replaced slaves it was felt that black people were no longer needed. So the Confederate government rounded them up and killed them off like the Nazis tried to kill off the Jews. As I’ve said several times, racism can be manifested in ways other than slavery. ---
**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:** [October 3, 2020, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-north-fighting-for/917800/146 "2020-10-03T15:01:29Z")
> [@Strassia](#): > > If there is one thing that we see repeated in the history of capitalism, it is that most capitalists will gladly trade the health, happiness, and lives of their descednts for a short term advantage over the course of their own lives. I see repeated over and over again the mantra that capitalists willingly sacrifice not just the lives of their descendants and society as a whole, but their own lives and those of their families and friends, merely for short-term profit (example: Pharma is uninterested in or actively covering up The Cure For Cancer, because it’s so profitable to sell anticancer drugs). Sheer self-interest argues against buying into this form of demonization. The big slaveowning pseudo-aristocrats felt the future of the South, as well as their fortunes depended on a continuation of the status quo. They lacked vision as well as morality. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Conrad\_Shadowdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ea924/32.png) [@Dr.Conrad\_Shadowdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Conrad_Shadowdale)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2020, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-north-fighting-for/917800/147 "2020-10-04T01:38:58Z")
[https://chancellorfiles.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/white-slaves-the-mulattoes/](https://chancellorfiles.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/white-slaves-the-mulattoes/) Interesting take on “one drop” mulattos and the mention of it motivating the conquering north. Racism is not equal to slavery. I’d submit that, today, there is more racial “harmony” in southern cities than in many comparable northern cities. ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2020, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-north-fighting-for/917800/148 "2020-10-04T02:09:45Z")
> [@Strassia](#): > > Most slaves were owned by major slaveholders whose single greatest asset was their slaves. What do you mean by “major slaveholders”? ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2020, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-north-fighting-for/917800/149 "2020-10-04T02:48:43Z")
> [@Dr.Conrad\_Shadowdale](#): > > Interesting take on “one drop” mulattos and the mention of it motivating the conquering north. > > Racism is not equal to slavery. I’d submit that, today, there is more racial “harmony” in southern cities than in many comparable northern cities. I have to strongly question that argument. It’s true that many slaves were genetically biracial - many were even predominantly white. But genes didn’t matter (and weren’t even known to exist). As far as society was concerned, slaves were black - it didn’t matter what their actual skin color was. I have never heard any accounts of people making abolitionist arguments on the basis that the people who were being held in slavery were fellow whites. ---
**Author:** ![Strassia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e8c25b/32.png) [@Strassia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strassia)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2020, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-north-fighting-for/917800/150 "2020-10-04T04:05:25Z")
Would you be willing to give up more than half your wealth? Unless the government paid them off, as they eventually would in Washington D.C., freeing the slaves would have bankrupted many of the oligarchs and definitely significantly diminished their wealth. Personally, I have come to the opinion that desire to maintain wealth and status lead to racist policies, which were then justified with racist ideas. ---
**Author:** ![Strassia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e8c25b/32.png) [@Strassia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Strassia)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2020, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-north-fighting-for/917800/151 "2020-10-04T04:08:24Z")
More than 100 slaves. While that was only about 1% of all free peoples and 4% of all slaveholders, they owned at least half of all the slaves. Of course, that 1% was the most wealthy and politically powerful as well. [https://eh.net/encyclopedia/slavery-in-the-united-states/](https://eh.net/encyclopedia/slavery-in-the-united-states/) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-what-was-the-north-fighting-for/917800.md?page=7)