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The South had its cotton, and the cotton crops needed slave labor to continue. Rather than give up the labor, the South decided to wage war. I'm wondering – could the South have given up slavery to avoid war? For example, could the South have emancipated the slaves voluntarily and kept them on as wage earners? Although they would have taken a financial hit, it would not have been so bad as what ultimately happened.Naturally, we have to set aside the issue of states' rights to consider this question.
The South had its cotton, and the cotton crops needed slave labor to continue. Rather than give up the labor, the South decided to wage war. I'm wondering – could the South have given up slavery to avoid war? For example, could the South have emancipated the slaves voluntarily and kept them on as wage earners? Although they would have taken a financial hit, it would not have been so bad as what ultimately happened.Naturally, we have to set aside the issue of states' rights to consider this question.
Yes the South could have avoided war. Congress would have phased slavery out incrementally over time rather than all at once. The Planter Class (Gentry) was a minority in Southern demographics, it would not have affected that many Southerners economically besides them. Of course, the Fire Eaters made it all but impossible to compromise after Lincoln took office.
Of course, they could have. They chose not to. Lincoln never wanted war, nor I would bet did most of the American people. Don has it right, the fire-eater inflamed everyone and made it impossible to find a peaceful solution. Slavery was the issue that got to the heart of states rights and the south could have abolished slavery but many people felt that if they caved on slavery then they would have to cave on everything else; subsequent history has proven them right, states rights have been largely ignored by the Federal government since the end of the Civil War.
The South had its cotton, and the cotton crops needed slave labor to continue. Rather than give up the labor, the South decided to wage war. I'm wondering – could the South have given up slavery to avoid war? For example, could the South have emancipated the slaves voluntarily and kept them on as wage earners? Although they would have taken a financial hit, it would not have been so bad as what ultimately happened.Naturally, we have to set aside the issue of states' rights to consider this question.
The problem is you take out state rights and assume the war was fought over slavery. You also assume that is why the north was fighting, for the end of slavery; they were not, initially. This is an age old question and I don't think anyone will ever agree on could this have been prevented, was it over slavery, expansion, yadda yadda… it is so complex that I don't think you can box it up with the slavery lable and say, “that solves that”.Here is my 2 cents for what it is worth… Slavery would have died out, eventually. Many northerners who fought owned slaves themselves, and were not fighting for the end of slavery. You had southerners who did not even own slaves fighting, not for slavery but for their right to their way of life (which happened to include the LEGAL practice of slavery), you also had southerners who did own slaves who took great care of their property (right or wrong as it sounds) and treated them better than some that were free were treated in the north. Yes, many were not treated right.Again, I think that this is such a complex issue that you can't look at a single point and use it as the focal point. Events leading up to the war, well before the war in the lat 18th and early 19th century were crucial factors in whether or not the war was going to happen. The difference today is that most of our expansion is over. We don't have states coming on at the rate they were back then. That was crucial in stepping up the ante and bringing the nation closer to war, as each state represented the possible interests of either the north or south in terms of representation.Honestly, all things considered, I do not believe war could have been avoided. I think it was a “right of passage” this country had to go through. I think that when you look back on the chain of events there was no stopping this event from happening, short of the Union letting the south go, again, right or wrong as that would have been.My two cents.. and it could easily have gone on to ten bucks!! 🙂
This is an age old question and I don't think anyone will ever agree on could this have been prevented, was it over slavery, expansion, yadda yadda… it is so complex that I don't think you can box it up with the slavery lable and say, “that solves that”.
It had occurred to me that with the devastation upon the South, and the suffering that Southerners endured during and after the war, some of them may have regretted going to war in the first place. What could they have done differently? Had they had the option of controlling the emancipation of the slaves on their own terms, would they have done it? Imposing sanctions on oneself is preferable to having them imposed by the outside in most cases. But would this have been enough for the North?
This is an age old question and I don't think anyone will ever agree on could this have been prevented, was it over slavery, expansion, yadda yadda… it is so complex that I don't think you can box it up with the slavery lable and say, “that solves that”.
It had occurred to me that with the devastation upon the South, and the suffering that Southerners endured during and after the war, some of them may have regretted going to war in the first place. What could they have done differently? Had they had the option of controlling the emancipation of the slaves on their own terms, would they have done it? Imposing sanctions on oneself is preferable to having them imposed by the outside in most cases. But would this have been enough for the North?
Again, looking at it from the perspective of the times, slavery was not ths issue to the southerners. The issue to them was you are telling me how I should live my life, you are telling me that my way is evil, when the laws of the land which I will defend say otherwise, you are telling me that I have less rights than you and that I should just'play ball' and roll with the changes, because, after all the changes are inevitable. Slavery was a match in a matchbook. It took someone to light it for it to ignight the eventual flame it would become. It did not happen on it's own.So, again, we keep seeing “slave this and slave that” all looked at in hindsight, and not looked at in the eyes of the southern farmer who was just living his life the way he always had, and again, by the law. He was obeying the law and now, someone from outside his sphere of influence is telling him he had better change his way of living. “What law am I breaking?” he might ask. “you are breaking natural law” might be the response. “Who gave you the right to tell me what is right and wrong when I am living by the SAME law of the land that you are?”The problem I see is the double standard of the law. Ultimately, there was a division in the entire belief system and the law was used as a crutch on both sides. There was enough of a difference, and this goes well back into the colonial period) between the southern and northern mentality that ultimately conflict was going to occur, with or without slavery.
The only thing I have a problem with is the Southerners were a little hypocritical because they were so instrumental in the formation of the union (Jefferson, Madison, Gerry, and later Calhoun et al), yet they were so quick to abandon it when things didn't go their way. And this is despite the best efforts of Henry Clay to appease them on several occasions.
Based on the idea that we left England over some insoluble problems and slavery looked to fit the bill, leaving the Union isn't such a stretch methinks.
The South had its cotton, and the cotton crops needed slave labor to continue. Rather than give up the labor, the South decided to wage war. I'm wondering – could the South have given up slavery to avoid war? For example, could the South have emancipated the slaves voluntarily and kept them on as wage earners? Although they would have taken a financial hit, it would not have been so bad as what ultimately happened.Naturally, we have to set aside the issue of states' rights to consider this question.
America is a family correct? Any Objections? O.k. all families have their dysfunctional moments ours was the Civil War. From the first strike of the gavel sounding the beginning of the Second Continental Congress to vote on the Deceleration of Independence to the First shots of bleeding Kansas America was destand to fight we had to get rid of bad blood be tween the family and because we did we became stronger. However Reconstruction was that time period after a fight before the the make up that did not happen untill like wwi and the great depression
America is a family correct? Any Objections? O.k. all families have their dysfunctional moments ours was the Civil War. From the first strike of the gavel sounding the beginning of the Second Continental Congress to vote on the Deceleration of Independence to the First shots of bleeding Kansas America was destand to fight we had to get rid of bad blood be tween the family and because we did we became stronger. However Reconstruction was that time period after a fight before the the make up that did not happen untill like wwi and the great depression
So it sounds like you think the war was inevitable, which it may indeed have been. In my hypothetical question I was thinking that the South could have possibly had a way out simply by removing the main problem – slavery (by turning the slaves into minimum wager earners). Even though this would have given the South an economic disadvantage, it would have been a small fraction of the damage that the South would go on to incur by waging war. From the sounds of the voices on this forum, even if the South had gotten rid of slavery, war would have still happened at some point.
The war was bound to come as long the issue of state's rights and where they ended and the federal governments authority began was unsettled. Slavery was a convenient issue and the Southerners were just stiff-necked enough to go to war over it. If it had not been slavery it would have been something else.
If it had not been slavery it would have been something else.
But what else would this have been? I am curious to hear what people think about other issues on the horizon.
You can take your pick of any issue where States rights should trump those of the Federal Government. There is that pesky 10th Amendment which states
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Within the limits of the tenth Amendment there are all kinds of things that could be argued infringe on States rights, slavery was just the hot button issue. How about the Fugitive Slave law? It forced Free-states to surrender escaped slaves to slave-states. Or any number of militia laws that required the states to organize a militia ufunded by the federal government, that could be seen as a violation of Article 1, Section 8. The point is that the country was diverging prior to 1861, all it needed was a spark. Any number of issues could have provided it, but slavery did in the end. The North wanted a strong federal government and the south did not.
The big thing that was going to eventually cause a divide IMHO would have been to difference in the people of the North and the South. They were quite different, even from the founding of the country, and viewpoints, ideas about government, personal life, religion, commerce, ettiquette, etc, all would have eventually led to a divide that could have potentially started a civil war without the specter of that peculiar institution.I think Hunleyfan got it right that this was a family thing that had to work itself out one way or another.
Cultural differences between North and South I agree with. But differences which would have given rise to war? That's another story. Disagreements would have to be a) serious and b) regional; I'm not sure that regulations which simply infringed upon states' rights, if they were a burden on the North as well, would have necessarily led to war with the South. Notch, with what you are saying it sounds like the South would simply have wanted to break away from the North on cultural grounds, and that the North would have prevented this. You could be right, but a difference I see is that there wouldn't have been the radicalism in feelings of Northernerns to such a move. The religiosity of the abolitionists helped to fuel the flames of opposition, and thereby provided a moral basis for the North's actions that people could believe in. I don't think this moral basis would have been the same if the North decided to go to war simply because it wanted to maintain the Union. It might have still been minimally sufficient, but not the same.
