“...but, to say that it would have been better if the south had won the civil war is nuts.
I concede the south had many great traditions ruined by the civil war but, the institution of slavery was an indefensible cruelty. The history of southern racism following the civil war is also a great shame that we’d all like to forget about.”
Not so fast.
Slavery could have been handled by the north boycotting the south. Great Britain would probably have brought pressure to bear given England’s rejection of slavery. There is a good case that the Civil War ended slavery in 1865 rather than 1885, but at tremendous cost.
And the North had vicious cruelty against blacks as well. My Mom grew up in Indiana. When she was a kid, it was illegal for a black man to be in the county overnight. I asked her what would have happened to a black who stayed, and she replied, “I suspect they would have found his body at the county line the next morning.” The law was changed while she was growing up.
Meanwhile, the Federal government grew in power and the states ability to resist diminished greatly. Looking at black life in many cities, and the effect the federal government has had on them, and a strong case could be made that they face greater evil from government welfare than they did from racism. Roughly 4000 blacks were lynched over a 100 year period. Want to guess how many died violently last year?
These “what if” questions really cannot be answered. What we do know is that people react violently to economic threats against their pocketbook. We have numerous examples from history.
The US was heading toward civil war anyway. It’s settled. We can only work to undo the damage. Furthermore the expansion of federal power really occurred in the 20th century and mainly under Roosevelt and then Johnson.