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>And sometimes those institutions have to drag people into the future by burning everything down and instilling virtue at the point of a bayonet. There is noth

by ancap 12y ago

>And sometimes those institutions have to drag people into the future by burning everything down and instilling virtue at the point of a bayonet. There is nothing virtuous about the death of around a million people, especially when it is dubious that the war's aim was to end slavery. Many other countries ended slavery without mass killing its populace. >I sometimes think that if Congress hadn't pissed all over the Constitution's federalist design in the 1960's, we'd still have segregation today. Trends towards desegregation and equality for blacks started at least 10 years before the Civil Rights Act. As is common with government they enact some law during a rising trend and then claim they started it all.

smacktoward 12y ago
> here is nothing virtuous about the death of around a million people, especially when it is dubious that the war's aim was to end slavery. Many other countries ended slavery without mass killing its populace. That's because the slaveholders in those countries didn't raise armies in rebellion when threatened with emancipation. In the US, they did. They could have been reasonable -- would probably have done much better in the long run if they had! -- but they chose not to, and paid the price.
cafard 12y ago
Great Britain ended slavery in its colonies well before 1860, but the British slaveholding interest was much smaller than in the US. France ended it later, and again, the vested interest we much smaller. I can't tell you much about Brazil. > Trends towards desegregation and equality for blacks started at least 10 years before the Civil Rights Act. Yes, and those trends were met with resistance that in some cases rose to lethal violence.
- ArkyBeagle 12y ago
  Britain continued defacto slavery in the farther reaches of the Empire. See also James Michener's "Caribbean", with its treatment of Rotten Boroughs, the more progressive of the Fabian Socialists and the like. This is what is significant to me about the use of Egyptian cotton instead of Southern cotton after the war as feedstock for the textile industry. Improvement in this plane is very difficult.
  - selimthegrim 12y ago
    Or for that matter, Indian cotton.

by ancap 12y ago

smacktoward 12y ago

> here is nothing virtuous about the death of around a million people, especially when it is dubious that the war's aim was to end slavery. Many other countries ended slavery without mass killing its populace. That's because the slaveholders in those countries didn't raise armies in rebellion when threatened with emancipation. In the US, they did. They could have been reasonable -- would probably have done much better in the long run if they had! -- but they chose not to, and paid the price.

cafard 12y ago

Great Britain ended slavery in its colonies well before 1860, but the British slaveholding interest was much smaller than in the US. France ended it later, and again, the vested interest we much smaller. I can't tell you much about Brazil. > Trends towards desegregation and equality for blacks started at least 10 years before the Civil Rights Act. Yes, and those trends were met with resistance that in some cases rose to lethal violence.

ArkyBeagle 12y ago
Britain continued defacto slavery in the farther reaches of the Empire. See also James Michener's "Caribbean", with its treatment of Rotten Boroughs, the more progressive of the Fabian Socialists and the like. This is what is significant to me about the use of Egyptian cotton instead of Southern cotton after the war as feedstock for the textile industry. Improvement in this plane is very difficult.
- selimthegrim 12y ago
  Or for that matter, Indian cotton.