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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 s

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.

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.