Importation of slaves ended before the civil war. The slave population was big enough to keep itself going.
The agricultural south could not keep up with the industrial north. That would not have changed.
Slavery as an institution would have been the economical thing for he south to do.
It would have lead to another war when half of the slaves started running north.
And when I think about the stereotypical southern politician, I think y’all would be in the same boat a us.
Actually, economic analysis in the 1850s by Frederick Law Olmsted and others indicated that paying people wages was more economical than slavery, due to increased productivity of wage workers. The thought at the time was that slavery would disappear in just a few decades.
Note also that slavery seemed to be on the way out in the late 1700s -- then Ely Whitney invented the cotton gin and created a huge industry around a new cash crop. The fact is that slavery was an anomaly. Fifty years after the cotton gin it was once again seen as a sloppy way to run an economy. It was limping along and would have withered away without the war.
“Slavery as an institution would have been the economical thing for he south to do.”
Nope. Slavery was expensive. Machinery was cheaper. Machinery was already starting to take hold. Slavery was doomed as an economic institution.
Are you aware that the ‘Emancipation Proclamation’ freed exactly zero slaves under the control of the Union? (If not, I suggest you read it. The EP is clear and concise.)
Slavery was legal and in practice in the Union at the beginning and end of the civil war.
(’Stay in our group, or we will kill you’ - is a statement of power and control.)
Fact: Very few people in the South owned slaves.
Fact: The reason slavery died out in the North was due to industrialization not altruism.
Fact: Fast evolving mechanization would have soon made slavery defunct in the South as it did in the North.
Fact: We are all slaves now Dude.