[Tzfat]

So, what you are saying is that if the south won, slavery would have been abolished? Sell that somewhere else.

No, don't. FR is a place for thinking and rational people. Anyone with half a brain, and a history book, would conclude that world-wide, the western practice of slavery would have died out within a generation. Of course, Africans themselves continue to practice that barbarism.

[Vermont Lt]

I am not arguing that. I am asking if another 25 years in chains is worth it? I argue it was not.

AND the problems associated with slaves running to the north would have lead to another war.

We can agree to disagree, but holding others in bondage is simply not right.

[JerseyanExile]

If left on its own that might have been true in some, though not all, Southern states- but the CSA was based as a nation on the preservation of that institution, and there is no way politically that slavery would be left to die off by 1885. It would be propped up if need be, and protected, but it would be kept going. The only way that I could see it as being finished by the late 1800s is if the Europeans (upon whom the CSA, a weak, agrarian nation with an fairly un-business-like culture) would be extremely reliant on for investment, credit, and as political backers against the US) basically forced them to do it.