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To: BroJoeK
Since I did not live in the Antebellum South, I cannot be certain about the views on slavery within various Southern communities. It would be safe to conclude that the general population was not anti-slavery. Since most did not own slaves, and most were poor, white, dirt farmers, especially in places such as Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, slavery was not their main concern. I would not be surprised that a Southern family with a section of land or more would own a slave or two. If my ancestors were indicative of families in the deep South, white farmers had large families, and the children provided the labor. It was cheap labor. Slavery was a dying economic system. The mechanization of farm equipment would have ended slavery on its own. I could see someone making the argument that they had the right to own a slave, which was supported by the US Supreme Court, even if they personally believed that it was morally wrong or economically foolish. The typical Confederate soldier was not fighting for slavery, but to maintain their Southern culture, which is far more than the issue of slavery.
173 posted on 04/19/2010 3:39:33 PM PDT by Nosterrex
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To: Nosterrex
"Slavery was a dying economic system. The mechanization of farm equipment would have ended slavery on its own."

You might be interested to learn that many defenders of the Southern Cause argue here that the South was actually very prosperous and wealthy -- on average far more wealthy than poor Northern farmers or factory workers.

How can that be? The answer is that slaves not only produced wealth, they WERE wealth, and so the South on average was quite wealthy.

Of course many Southern counties had few or no slaves. This was especially true in western Virginia, eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. These areas remained hot-beds of Union sympathizers throughout the war.

And in Border States such as Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri, where slave populations were barely 10% of the total, and slave owners correspondingly few, sympathy for the Southern Cause never grew strong enough to vote for secession.

But in the Deep South, where slave populations were 50% and more of the total, and slave ownership a matter of necessity and social status, then any perceived threat against slavery -- whether real or just imagined -- was both intolerable and a matter of life and death.

As to whether slavery would have died of its own accord in the decades after the Civil War -- that's very hard to say.
Yes, possibly in Border States and the Upper South, where slavery was never so strong.
But the Deep South is a very different story, and I don't see how they would ever have changed voluntarily.

175 posted on 04/20/2010 7:11:10 PM PDT by BroJoeK (a little historical perspective...)
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