Totally agree there. The relative backwards-ness of the Confederacy was one of their biggest disadvantages.
I think legally it could have lasted until whenever the first wave of national progressivism kicked in. I think alot of agrarian and backwoods folk down there are cash poor and live off of refinancing their inherited land. If they could contract out their slaves or extract some similar cash value from them, like rights to their wages, don't see why the lawyers, judges and banks down there wouldn't keep the system running. I'm trying to imagine if a slaveowner could even join a guild or union and vote in collective bargaining for his slave's work wages.
I am not at all as optimistic as some of you. I think we would have had slavery at least into my lifetime if a deal had been reached with the South pre-Civil War. This wasn't just economics. You look at Jim Crow, at a legal system that trumped up charges against blacks, the KKK, lynchings, usury, factory/farm "stores," etc. There is now way the culture of slavery gives way naturally in the South until at least post WWII. Here's Lincoln talking about the emotional investment the South had in slavery (from the famous Cooper Union speech): Sound familiar? Anyway, the culture of the South was significantyly different from the culture of the mid-Atlantic and New England where slavery was outlawed through the early 1800's and anyone who grew up in the South in the 1960's knows it wasn't a given that slavery would have ended naturally. Hell, we're still fighting the Civil War.
I wonder how this fits into the equation............ http://www.whattheproblemis.com/documents/ra/they-were-slaves.pdf (Click the link above for the pdf of Michael Hoffman's book) <iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Ugo1YxZWWJ8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/TSMj4Ove-5Y" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <iframe width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Z-_KssKiM20" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> The reality is that there isn't a culture that exists in ancient or recent history that at one point or another hadn't felt the ravages of slavery. Europeans, Asians, Arabs, and peoples of North and South "American" descent and peoples of Mediterranean descent have all been enslaved. Sometimes at the hand of peoples of the same culture, sometimes at the hands of "outsiders". example....There are documents and also physical archaeological evidence (skeletons, sculptures etc) that show that slaves from Europe were used as far as down as Central Africa as far back as 3,000 years ago, sold to the Africans by the Arabs. More recently: Professor Robert Davis, in his book Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800, estimated that 1 million to 1.25 million White people were enslaved by North African pirates between 1530 and 1780. North African pirates abducted and enslaved more Europeans from coastal villages and towns. Italy, Spain, Portugal and France were hardest hit but the raiders also seized people in Britain, Ireland and Iceland. They even captured 130 American seamen from ships that they boarded in the Atlantic and Mediterranean between 1785 and 1793 Interesting that at the same time slave ships were leaving West Africa, bound for the America's, Europeans were being rounded up and shipped to North Africa. My point is that we all have a much more complicated shared history than that taught in our grade school history books. Greed and power has shaped and molded history as much as anything else.
Just to be clear, I didn't intend to imply that wholesale bigotry largely similar to what existed in our actual history, post-Civil War, wouldn't have existed. Just that the "legal" form of slavery would have disappeared. As you've probably read in my posts before, I'm old enough to have ridden in city buses while the Blacks of Houston rode in the back, I went swimming at my neighborhood pool when Blacks were not allowed to swim there, and yes, there was a sign reading "Whites Only." This was in Southeast Houston at a freakin' city park. I saw "Whites Only" restrooms and water fountains. This was in the 1950's. It was obscene. You make a good point, one I should have made in my post, earlier. Just because slavery might have ended in this country without a civil war, given time and some luck, bigotry wasn't going anywhere, anytime soon. Even had Lincoln lived, moderated "Reconstruction," and soothed the beaten South to a degree after the Civil War, bigotry would have been rampant for years. Thanks for the post.
Thank you. By the way, every time I read the Cooper Union speech the harder it is not to be awed with the genius of Lincoln. I think it is the greatest speech in our history and it certainly made Lincoln a president. You read what the Founders said about the Tories,what Jackson said about the banks, what Lincoln said about the people who ran the South, what TR and FDR and JFK and even Clinton said and you realize that at a basic level, it's the same people, the same sides, and the same fight.
Sorry, all I got out of that speech was: "That is cool." ~ Abe Lincoln Okay, the rest of it was really neat also. I have nothing to contribute to this thread since I never paid much attention in American history classes, but I am definitely enjoying reading this discussion. Hopefully this won't derail the thread too much, but to Deckard and others of a, ahem, superior age: How did segregation strike you when you were growing up? And how did it affect your perception of black people? If you feel comfortable doing so, please be honest--I don't think anyone would fault you for having been young and naturally impressionable during an era of cultural/ethnic strife... Well, unless you're one of the nutjobs pushing the "blacks-on-twitter are coming for you!" nonsense.
I was born in 1961. My family had a farm near Livingston (now mostly under Lake Livingston) where we would always gather at least once a month. I loved going there because there was always stuff to do.... feeding chickens, petting the mule, watching the cows... all the things a young boy likes to do. Whenever I would go, a neighbor kid would come over and we would play. Willie was a black kid who lived in, literally, a shack at the edge of the woods. His dad did some work on the farm so my family knew Willie's family. One of the fondest memories I have is jumping into haystacks from the barn ladder with him. Anyway, when I turned 6, Willie stopped coming. I was disappointed, but never said anything because, you know, I was a kid and I always hoped he would be there the next time... but he never was. Finally, when I was a teenager I asked about him. My mom told me my great aunt stopped him from coming over when I turned 6 because they didn't want me getting too close to blacks and they felt like 6 was the right age to stop that sort of thing. That's the most dramatic example. There were countless other little subtle conversations adults (mostly men) had with you where they would denigrate blacks and by the tenor of their words they just assumed you thought the same way they did. A lot of playing up the "unfairness" of the Civil Rights movement and how blacks were asking for something without earning it. By the late 60's it was common for my more crackerish relatives and neighbors to completely (and probably intentionally) conflate the civil rights proponents with hippies and war protesters. Hard to say how it affected me. It seemed I always knew something was off about the issue even though I was in my teens before I had the tools to put it into concrete thoughts. Plus, the world changed greatly from the time I was a young boy to the time I graduated high school. I ended up being in one of the first integrated first grade classes and we went for grades 1-3 in the old whites only elementary school and then grades 4-5 in the old blacks only school and then 6th grade in the old blacks only jr. high and 7-8 in the old whites only jr. high and finally 9-12 in the old whites only HS. Not sure how I would have turned out if 1965 had lasted for a decade or more. Interestingly enough, my great aunt was one of those complex southern characters that could have been in a novel as she welcomed the enmity of the white folks in town by continuing to hire blacks, provided charity to black families, supported the black church nearest the farm, and supported civil rights. She just didn't want any of her family establishing an equal relationship with blacks after the age of 6.
rimrocker, i understand what you're saying about culture but you're totally ignoring a lot of other factors. the black migration from the south in the thirties in particular to fill the factories of the north. not only do you have the mechnization of farming, but you also have a great need of labor in the north that had to be filled.
I'm not ignoring that stuff at all. However, it is indisputable that there are some things the people in power will not allow to change because of politics, culture, or other social phenomenon even when the economics make no sense. And there are things the people without power will not want to change because of the fear of change.
Another "what if" scenario, perhaps one that is more likely to have happened is this: What if the North just let the South go and we had 2 different countries?
I was "young and impressionable," but lucky enough to have two parents that were probably the most liberal pair in the working class/lower middle class neighborhood I grew up in. A neighborhood of inexpensive homes built for and purchased by WWII vets with the GI Bill, inhabited mostly with working husbands and stay at home wives. Understand that liberal back then in that area was a relative term, but my folks definitely fit the bill. Dad worked three jobs while going to a Houston university, eventually getting a job there as an instructor. He still had two part-time jobs and kept taking classes, even while working at the university. That kind of effort wasn't at all unusual for the vets coming out of WWII, and later Korea. When he was able to be at home for dinner (he frequently wasn't), we sat around and talked about our day. Anytime the subject of race came up, he made a point of saying things that stuck with me. That they were Americans, same as us, who should have the same chances to pull themselves up, and that the only real difference was that they looked different than we did. Mom would nod in agreement and smile. I can only imagine the conversations they had when we weren't around. If anything, they were probably more liberal than they let on. Sadly, the majority of the rest of the neighborhood weren't like that at all. I heard every derogatory insult and "joke" aimed at Blacks that can be imagined, and not just from the other kids, but from their parents, as well. That park I mentioned earlier was a long bike ride from our house and I went there often. My grandmother didn't drive, but I often spent Friday nights with her. We'd watch local wrestling on her TV with the big magnifying glass in front of the tube to make the picture bigger, then on Saturday morning, take the bus Downtown, with Blacks... men, women, and children, packed in the back, to "shop" at Foley's (we mostly just looked at stuff) and eat lunch in their restaurant, which was pretty cheap, but tasty. They had an enormous toy department, that I could spend an endless amount of time in, looking at everything. You rarely saw Blacks there shopping. Dad eventually became a department chair at one of the colleges at the university, before he was 35. He was one of the first on the campus to push through (and it took a push) the hiring of a Black instructor to work for him. He's been gone nearly 30 years, but obviously, I still think of him a lot. He would be appalled, simply appalled, at what we've been seeing politically in Texas and the country. What the Republican Party in Austin did to education this last session would have had him livid, as would the cuts in social services. He would have been angry at the thinly veiled racism aimed at the President from some quarters. Dad would have been thrilled at his election. Mom was, and voted for him. I found several Time magazines after she passed away this past Spring, and she had kept all of those with Obama and his family on the cover, rightfully seeing it as an historic event. You see, my father was able to do what he accomplished in life because of government programs that made it possible for him to go to college, something he only dreamed of before the war, and it made buying our first house possible. He was a great admirer of FDR and what he did to confront the Great Depression, because he saw with his own eyes what those programs accomplished, as flawed as many of them were. He knew poverty before the war, and saw combat in the Pacific. He didn't see Government as the enemy. He saw Government take us out of an economic catastrophe and win a world war against unspeakable evil. My mother experienced the same things. Her family took in several relatives who had lost their homes when they lost their jobs, even though they were struggling themselves. My father was "farmed out" to a relative himself for a while, when my grandfather was having to go from town to town for work. Yeah, folks had it tough back then. I wish there were more people around today like my parents. The world would be better for it.
Just about all my profs were there because of the GI Bill, meaning they fought in WWII... yet according to conservatives at the time, they were the Liberal vanguard, the Marxists who brainwashed American kids.
One thing that has to be considered about the entrenchment of Southern racist attitudes was how much did the Civil War and Reconstruction contribute to that? As most of us from the South know that the Civil War is often called the "War Between the States" or even the "War of Northern Aggression". There is a lingering sense that still resonates today of bitterness about the defeat and occupation of the South while the Confederacy and the Antebellum South have been romanticized. Much of that bitterness was channeled towards blacks who were seen as the cause of Southern defeat and humiliation. Keep in mind this attitude wasn't just in the South as blacks were also lynched in the North during the draft riots at the height of the Civil War. Its possible that without the Civil War and / or Reconstruction attitudes might not have been so entrenched.
Here's an interesting question that I once had posed to me. "If slavery had died the natural death that it was headed towards instead of being ended the way it was, would the relationship between blacks and whites be better today?"
Strangely enough I think it would be better in some aspects. A lot of white people were bitter after the Civil War and took it out on Black people. That bitterness was been passed on for several generations, which was a driving force behind to Jim Crow laws etc.. Of course if it took another 20-30 years to end slavery, would Black people be better off now or worse off? You could make the case that they would be better off now because there would have been Less resistance from whites for the ex-slaves to be integrated into a free society. However thats just speculation because you could say that by freeing the slaves when they were freed, that they had 20-30years earlier beginning to their transition to free society. I think slavery without secession was inevitable, but your question is actually very interesting and harder to answer.
