You didn't? It looks like you just said exactly that: that free labor is labor you don't have to pay for. For you, slavery is freedom, I guess.
It is an immoral way to become wealthy, but it was a legal way to become wealthy in that era.
Society has decided some ways of getting wealthy are immoral. If it can't forbid such ways, it tries to disadvantage them. It can decide that pornography or escort services or human trafficking or gambling aren't good ways to make money. They may be legal, but the fact that they are considered to be immoral means that they can't claim to be on the same level of legitimacy as other, more respectable ways of earing a living.
I didn't say the northerners who hated slavery didn't have a valid gripe. What I said is they weren't motivated by concern for slaves as modern historians would have us believe. ... What is not known among most people nowadays is how very racist were the Northern states.
You are about fifty years behind the times. Current historians are very critical of Northern racial attitudes, Lincoln, and the early Republican Party. So are journalists. You persist in identifying today's progressives with the mid-19th century Republicans, when most of today's progressives, apart from occasionally appealing to popular images of Lincoln, aren't fans of Lincoln or his party or his policies.
Once people understand that virtually everybody was racist back then, it's not hard to buy into the idea that Northerners were even more anti-Black than Southerners, as Dickens did at the time. The truth is more complicated than that. Replacing one myth with another isn't much of an improvement.
You chastised me for being snarky. I apologized.
They may be legal, but the fact that they are considered to be immoral means that they can't claim to be on the same level of legitimacy as other, more respectable ways of earing a living.
Societal disapproval does not equal force of law. To eradicate something, you must make it illegal. There was not sufficient support in the populace to do this in 1861, and if we are being honest, there was not sufficient support in the populace to do it in 1865 either, but Washington DC cheated, as they are wont to do.
You persist in identifying today's progressives with the mid-19th century Republicans, when most of today's progressives, apart from occasionally appealing to popular images of Lincoln, aren't fans of Lincoln or his party or his policies.
It's an easy comparison to make. Where were the hearts of progressivism in 1860? In the big cities, especially in Northern big cities like Boston and New York. What is the ideology of Progressivism in the 1860s? Protectionist. Societal upheaval. Big government control. Disapproval of the existing social morality. Party of wealth and privilege. Same as today.
Once people understand that virtually everybody was racist back then, it's not hard to buy into the idea that Northerners were even more anti-Black than Southerners, as Dickens did at the time. The truth is more complicated than that.
I don't think it really matters if they were worse, and there is some evidence to indicate they were, but the main point here is to demonstrate they were not motivated by concern for black people. In other words, they didn't give a sh*t about slavery, and they did not invade with the intentions of doing anything about it at all.
Their intent was to do what Washington DC demanded they do, and Washington DC didn't give a sh*t about slavery either. Washington DC invaded to establish economic control over states that would have been a massive financial threat to their wealthy buddies controlling the government then, in the same manner wealthy progressives are controlling it now.
The claim that the civil war was about slavery goes down as the biggest con-job in American history, and this from a president that said "You can't fool all the people all the time."
:)