Discussion question from my history book:

[Brigid]

"Without Northern interference, American slavery would have eventually died out."

What do you think?

I say NO. Given the sheer pigheadedness and hubris of so many Southerners of the day, and the fact that blacks were still fighting for their rights a century after the Civil War ended, I just don't think so.

[ZombieHorde]

1. I guess humans are very likely to go extinct at some point. nt

[Capt. Obvious]

2. "Without American interference, would the Arab Spring have overthrown Saddam?"

I think it would have died out - just not for god knows how long in some/most areas. But that was the statement - eventually.

[DearHeart]

3. I agree with you. I think that alot of people, not just southerners, would be

fine with the practice! Unfortunately, racism is everywhere, not just down south.

[BlueJazz]

4. A decent part of the South would even support it now. Thankfully they are dying out.

[tblue]

26. I think so too.

They don't say it out loud, but they long for those good old days.

[Scootaloo]

28. "Would"?

Slavery effectively existed well into the 20th century, and there's still pressure to reinstate it. The sharecropping system and prison labor. Both exploited the poor, and mostly nonwhites, to perpetuate the system that was taken down in the middle of the 19th century. All they had to do was change some words and it was back to business.

[ananda]

32. Slavery still exists in America.

it's in the prison systems and in the private sector's practices
regarding immigrants.

[Warpy]

5. I say yes, it would have died out

Agricultural mechanization made farming so cheap that it would make no sense to keep a plantation full of slaves and have to feed them, clothe them and give them basic medical care. Non slave states would have buried the south economically had they not freed the slaves and converted to machinery.

However, the south was also fighting to keep living under the scrapped Articles of Confederation, to be immune from constitutional interference. Slavery was a big part of that, yes, but there was much more to it than that.

Likely the institution would have sputtered on for a while with slaves to run the machines and provide servants for the large houses. However, that too would likely have morphed into something else as prejudice against landowners who clung to it increased.

[Chisox08]

18. The plantation would have just changed forms

Instead of slaves working on a farm they would be at Wal-mart. If the South would have industrialized slavery could have lasted a very long time. It would have been near impossible for the cheap labor provided by immigrants in the North to compete with slave labor in the South.

[Warpy]

19. I think it's incompatible with the Wally's business model

After all, when you've got a huge capital investment in something, you want to take better care of it than employees you can underpay and shift onto the dole for food stamps and health care.

Agricultural mechanization would have dropped the bottom out of the slave market prices. It would have been far cheaper to free them and get out from under the burden of feeding, clothing, and housing them.

[Chisox08]

20. I was just using Walmart as an example

Slavery would have moved from the fields to the factories, if the South would have had their way. It took America over 100 years for African Americans to even be viewed as equal citizens and in some parts of this country we are still not considered equal.

[Ptah]

24. The mechanization you speak of didn't come into wide use until the late 1930's

Even with emancipation, the hard labor fell to the ex-slaves and their descendants.

[Warpy]

33. I didn't say when it would have happened

only that it would have. Likely the northern states would have had a huge refugee problem in the 1950s because of it, slaves freed down south with no work.

[Gravitycollapse]

6. That's a loaded suggestion. You should tear that page out of your book and mail it back.

Tell them to try harder.

[BainsBane]

11. good advice

sounds like a crap book.

[TimberValley]

7. I think it would have ended, too, but taken much longer.

The world simply changed. Things changed. Even absent the Civil War (and assuming the South didn't secede, otherwise we'd be talking an entirely different country than the US), I don't see how slavery would have continued in its form.


Can you name any other very large, major nation in the world today who still has slavery on a large scale? I can't. I think slavery was eventually bound to end - but the Civil War accelerated it much sooner.

[liberal_at_heart]

8. I grew up in the South and have met many people, not all, but many who would be happy

to still have slavery. The laws may be in place to protect people, but attitudes have changed little, at least among certain people. Hopefully that is changing but racist parents tend to pass on those traits to at least a couple of kids. My husband is not racist, but his brother certainly picked up and is carrying the racist mantle.

[1-Old-Man]

9. Yes, if slavery were not allowed to expand into new territories that is

By the time of the Civil War both Virginia and North Carolina had become slave exporting states. That is to say that the use of slaves in those two states at labor in the fields was decreasing and that business replaced with the breeding of slaves for sale 'down the river', which is to say anywhere further south. As I understand it changes in agriculture, or more specifically changes in staple crops for various regions, underwent changes in the first half of the 1800s that made reliance on slavery for the cultivation of large field crops a thing of the past. And that said it seems apparent that slavery could not have survived the mechanization and motorization of agriculture.

[BainsBane]

10. What history book is that?

Possibly, eventually. Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, Cuba in 1886. But it's impossible to know for sure. But what kind of history book is this?

[Gravitycollapse]

12. This stinks of Texas school boards.

[BainsBane]

13. Oh no wonder

As in not really history. No wonder Americans are so poorly educated.

[Brigid]

14. HIST2 by Kevin M. Schultz.

www.engage.com/4ktrpress

The book barely skims the surface. There is a pretty good amount of online material, but I feel like I'm reading nothing but study notes instead of a whole book.

[Journeyman]

15. As an established, State-sanctioned "institution"? Definitely. . . .

Too many countries would have refused to have commerce with a slave-owning entity. England remained neutral throughout the Civil War in part because the working class in the mills refused to side with a slave power. Slavery, and the slave trade, was phased out in many parts of the world throughout the Nineteenth Century. And in the face of mechanized farming and the general aversion to slavery of an enlightened public, it would not have survived here. Kept from expanding, it would have died away. Much as Mr Lincoln, in the years leading up to the War, expected it to do.

The War hastened the inevitable, produced a more definitive emancipation, and helped create the legal basis for the civil rights which we continue to press for to this day.

[Taitertots]

16. The conventional defense of the author's position is that mechanization would force slavery to end.

The obvious response is that the South would have prevented the Great Migration north and forced Slaves to work in southern factories.

[Iggo]

17. Nawthuhn Intuhference, eh?

Loaded!

[Marr]

21. I expect it would've morphed into something else-- not plantation slavery, but

some form of cheap labor second-class citizenship. I feel like I'm being fairly generous in this view, however, considering the institutionalized resistance the South put up to integration right through the last century.

[jmowreader]

22. We had slavery for a lot longer than you think

People stopped being property, but the practice of working for no money continued for a very long time. Consider 19th century Idaho mines. You would sign on for a mining season, which started when the snow melted off the roads and ended when they became impassable. By the time you settled up for your bunk in the bunkhouse, clothes, tools, everything you broke, food and the company store, you generally left the mountain poorer than when you arrived. That's slavery if it's anything.

Now for the sick part: if it was legal to do this, you could start a company that gave its workers three hots and a cot, basic healthcare, and $40 in scrip a week to buy toiletries with in exchange for not being able to be gotten rid of for 12 months, and people would be lined up around the block to apply.

[yurbud]

23. self-interest might have made them realize using sharecroppers was more profitable

than slaves

the sharecropper can absorb the risk and even end up owing the land owner money.

By contrast, besides the cost of buying the slaves, some small amount had to be spent on clothing, feeding, etc.

Also, slavery is a way to deal with a labor shortage: if you don't have enough people to do the work, you either have to offer a high enough wage to attract workers, or hold workers prisoner.

Since we don't have a labor shortage today, employers want the opposite of slaves--they want disposable workers, like illegal immigrants.

[moondust]

25. Perhaps the path of apartheid.

Divestment, boycotts, trade sanctions, etc. by more civilized nations might have ended it EVENTUALLY, though it might have taken a long time.

I've had no doubt for many years now that many Americans would welcome a return to some form of slavery or feudalism in which they realized all the profits and wallowed in excess and opulence while somebody else did all the work. The slave owner's "profits over people" mindset lives on.

[DonCoquixote]

27. slavery would have expanded

Do not forget, the CSA felt they got shafted out of Cuba and Mexico, because under a compromise, bioth of those would have been considered southern states. They would not stop until the whole of Latin America was theirs.

[UBEEDelusional]

29. Slavery was in decline prior to the invention of the cotton gin

The cost of owning slaves was becoming a burden in relation to the expense. Sure they did not have to pay a wage the but they did have to buy them and take care of them too and costs add up fast. Picking and cleaning cotton was very labor intensive until the cotton gin came around then almost over night the tables were turned so to speak. A cotton gin processed about 50 pounds of cotton a day and could be accomplished by 1 slave. Prior to that to get anything close to 50 lbs a day you would need bunch of slaves cleaning cotton all day and a whole bunch more in the fields picking. Very labor intensive operation.

One could say in a twisted sort of way that because Eli Whitney was an uppity Yankee it was his fault. Does you text also refer to the US Civil War as the war of Northern Aggression too?

[TexasProgresive]

31. There you go! +1,000

[Ptah]

34. The cotton gin caused the increase in the number of slaves.

The invention of the cotton gin caused massive growth in the production of
cotton in the United States, concentrated mostly in the South. Cotton
production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850.
As a result, the South became even more dependent on plantations and slavery,
with plantation agriculture becoming the largest sector of the Southern economy.
While it took a single slave about ten hours to separate a single pound of fiber
from the seeds, a team of two or three slaves using a cotton gin could produce
around fifty pounds of cotton in just one day. The number of slaves rose in
concert with the increase in cotton production, increasing from around
700,000 in 1790 to around 3.2 million in 1850

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin#Effects_of_the_cotton_gin_in_the_United_States

[LeftInTX]

30. 40 years ago, my textbook in Wisconsin said the same thing

I believed it at the time, but I've changed my mind. We also learned a fallacy that the KKK was extinct.

[Quantess]

35. I say it could have gone the other way,

so that every Joe Blow on the block and his brother in Shantytown would each have a slave. Owning a slave might have become as common in every household as owning a microwave.