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> ...and there were a lot of people in the North who wanted to give up and let the Confederacy exist as an independent country. Just because something was done

by roenxi 3y ago

> ...and there were a lot of people in the North who wanted to give up and let the Confederacy exist as an independent country. Just because something was done doesn't mean it was a great idea. There is an uncomfortable counterfactual to explore of whether it a better idea to let people split up and self govern. It is very much a history-written-by-winners moment to assume it is self evident that people have to be conquered for their own good. A remarkable number of countries that weren't invaded by Union soldiers also gave up on slavery. It isn't economically feasible, anyone who tries to use it is going to get shredded by capitalists.

actionfromafar 3y ago
Fundamentalism can keep going without concern over what is tenable from a capitalist viewpoint. There is Russia, North Korea and Iran right now, to just name some prominent examples. (Then there is the uncomfortable juxtaposition of the words "self govern" within a country that kept slaves. The slaves of course aren't counted as self governing.)
- roenxi 3y ago
  And we're also better off for the US not invading Russia, North Korea and Iran. That is what was so suspicious about the US Civil War, the US is traditionally fairly heedless of terrible things happening unless it smells an economic benefit from being involved. The traditional tool for ending slavery has been prosperity. That worked pretty much everywhere it was tried - including North America. Armies are not a tool of creating prosperity, so it seems a bit suspicious that this was the best path in the Southern US. Obviously the States gets to sort itself out with no involvement from anyone else, but it is a very open question whether holding itself together was the best choice.
  - actionfromafar 3y ago
    I'm not saying invade this or that. I'm saying, if the South had persisted as a state, it could very well have lived on way past its prime as a fundamentalist slave state.
maxerickson 3y ago
Does the North help enforce slavery in the split country scenario? Does the confederacy happily let slaves escape across the border to freedom? You are also sort of writing off the intrinsic value of freeing 4 million people sooner than later.
- pdonis 3y ago
  > Does the North help enforce slavery in the split country scenario? No, why would they? In fact being free of any legal obligation to enforce the fugitive slave laws (and the provision in the Constitution that they were based on) was one of the main arguments made by abolitionists who advocated for the North seceding from the Union. > Does the confederacy happily let slaves escape across the border to freedom? Considering that even with the fugitive slave laws in place, a large number of slaves escaped and were never returned, it would certainly seem like many more of them could have escaped if the North and South were separate countries. Of course the Confederates, or at least the slaveowning ones, wouldn't have been happy about it, but what would they do about it? Declare war on the North? > You are also sort of writing off the intrinsic value of freeing 4 million people sooner than later. Sooner than what? If we are going to talk about counterfactuals, how about this one: abolitionists in 1831 have not yet dialed up their rhetoric, and the bill that was in the Virginia state legislature in that year to establish gradual emancipation of the slaves passes (in our actual world, the bill failed because copies of William Lloyd Garrison's famous pamphlet arrived, calling the Constitution "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell" and advocating for Northern violence to free the slaves, and once the Virginia legislators read it, all support for the bill evaporated). Other Southern states gradually follow Virginia's lead. Result: by 1865, all of the slaves are freed without costing a single life or requiring a single shot to be fired. We could also consider another counterfactual: what if the US had done what Britain did, and freed the slaves by buying their freedom from the slaveowners? Britain did that in 1838.
  - maxerickson 3y ago
    Thank you for giving me the simple answers to my dumb questions. I do wonder why anyone thinks the war somehow ends if the North isn't helping enforce slavery.
0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
>A remarkable number of countries that weren't invaded by Union soldiers also gave up on slavery. It isn't economically feasible, anyone who tries to use it is going to get shredded by capitalists. I'm actually not sure about this. Based on what I've read, many in the North had been saying for ages that slavery was going to go away on its own, and the war only happened when it became increasingly clear that that wasn't happening. >Estimates of the number of enslaved people today range from around 38 million[1] to 49.6 million,[2][3][4] depending on the method used to form the estimate and the definition of slavery being used.[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century I think it's true that slavery was holding the South back economically, but their "shredded by the capitalists" moment came when they were crushed by the North's superior industrial economy during the war. I don't know how else it was supposed to happen.

by roenxi 3y ago

actionfromafar 3y ago

Fundamentalism can keep going without concern over what is tenable from a capitalist viewpoint. There is Russia, North Korea and Iran right now, to just name some prominent examples. (Then there is the uncomfortable juxtaposition of the words "self govern" within a country that kept slaves. The slaves of course aren't counted as self governing.)

roenxi 3y ago
And we're also better off for the US not invading Russia, North Korea and Iran. That is what was so suspicious about the US Civil War, the US is traditionally fairly heedless of terrible things happening unless it smells an economic benefit from being involved. The traditional tool for ending slavery has been prosperity. That worked pretty much everywhere it was tried - including North America. Armies are not a tool of creating prosperity, so it seems a bit suspicious that this was the best path in the Southern US. Obviously the States gets to sort itself out with no involvement from anyone else, but it is a very open question whether holding itself together was the best choice.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  I'm not saying invade this or that. I'm saying, if the South had persisted as a state, it could very well have lived on way past its prime as a fundamentalist slave state.

maxerickson 3y ago

Does the North help enforce slavery in the split country scenario? Does the confederacy happily let slaves escape across the border to freedom? You are also sort of writing off the intrinsic value of freeing 4 million people sooner than later.

pdonis 3y ago
> Does the North help enforce slavery in the split country scenario? No, why would they? In fact being free of any legal obligation to enforce the fugitive slave laws (and the provision in the Constitution that they were based on) was one of the main arguments made by abolitionists who advocated for the North seceding from the Union. > Does the confederacy happily let slaves escape across the border to freedom? Considering that even with the fugitive slave laws in place, a large number of slaves escaped and were never returned, it would certainly seem like many more of them could have escaped if the North and South were separate countries. Of course the Confederates, or at least the slaveowning ones, wouldn't have been happy about it, but what would they do about it? Declare war on the North? > You are also sort of writing off the intrinsic value of freeing 4 million people sooner than later. Sooner than what? If we are going to talk about counterfactuals, how about this one: abolitionists in 1831 have not yet dialed up their rhetoric, and the bill that was in the Virginia state legislature in that year to establish gradual emancipation of the slaves passes (in our actual world, the bill failed because copies of William Lloyd Garrison's famous pamphlet arrived, calling the Constitution "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell" and advocating for Northern violence to free the slaves, and once the Virginia legislators read it, all support for the bill evaporated). Other Southern states gradually follow Virginia's lead. Result: by 1865, all of the slaves are freed without costing a single life or requiring a single shot to be fired. We could also consider another counterfactual: what if the US had done what Britain did, and freed the slaves by buying their freedom from the slaveowners? Britain did that in 1838.
- maxerickson 3y ago
  Thank you for giving me the simple answers to my dumb questions. I do wonder why anyone thinks the war somehow ends if the North isn't helping enforce slavery.

0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago

>A remarkable number of countries that weren't invaded by Union soldiers also gave up on slavery. It isn't economically feasible, anyone who tries to use it is going to get shredded by capitalists. I'm actually not sure about this. Based on what I've read, many in the North had been saying for ages that slavery was going to go away on its own, and the war only happened when it became increasingly clear that that wasn't happening. >Estimates of the number of enslaved people today range from around 38 million[1] to 49.6 million,[2][3][4] depending on the method used to form the estimate and the definition of slavery being used.[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century I think it's true that slavery was holding the South back economically, but their "shredded by the capitalists" moment came when they were crushed by the North's superior industrial economy during the war. I don't know how else it was supposed to happen.