Evidence comes in several varieties. With the exception of the well-documented physical captivity and its attendant crimes against the enslaved, much of the evidence offered in support of the various positions taken on this thread are circumstantial. And that variety of evidence is open to interpretations that can often bring visions of a dog chasing its tail.
The various approaches to slave ownership, "kindly" or brutal, are inhumane. Slavery, whether practiced by T. Jefferson etc. or a Simon Legree, is a crime against humanity, in my view. And there is no appeal for me in the opinion that, in due time, a benevolent or industrially evolved South would phase out the abomination of slavery. As a side note, IMO, the belief that black intelligence could not be used in highly skilled labor in any environment is a slur on the legacies of individuals of Carver's worth.
It is obvious, at least to me, that no amount of citing data of this or that approach to slavery or its suitability for this or that employment has any bearing on the North's absolute duty to abolish it.
I will, however, state that this thread's intellectual spinning etc. has been interesting.
A few points. Nobody is arguing for slavery. As to when it would have ended in the South that of course can only be a matter of conjecture but there were many who felt secession would lead to a more rapid collapse of slavery in the states where it existed. The CSA only had a total White population of 5.5 million and it had a 1500 mile long border to police. There is simply no way they could have prevented hordes of slaves from pouring over the border into the US which would now be a separate country and under no obligation to return their escaped slaves. In order to work, slavery needed to socialize the enforcement costs. It needed the fugitive slave clause in the US constitution. And Yes, this argument was made at the time.
"But secession, Lincoln argued, would actually make it harder for the South to preserve slavery. If the Southern states tried to leave the Union, they would lose all their constitutional guarantees, and northerners would no longer be obliged to return fugitive slaves to disloyal owners. In other words, the South was safer inside the Union than without, and to prove his point Lincoln confirmed his willingness to support a recently proposed thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, which would specifically prohibit the federal government from interfering with slavery in states where it already existed." (Klingaman, Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, pp. 32-33)
As a side note, IMO, the belief that black intelligence could not be used in highly skilled labor in any environment is a slur on the legacies of individuals of Carver's worth.
Who believed that Blacks were not intelligent enough to become highly skilled in various specialties? Obviously some were highly skilled in various areas right from the start.
It is obvious, at least to me, that no amount of citing data of this or that approach to slavery or its suitability for this or that employment has any bearing on the North's absolute duty to abolish it. I will, however, state that this thread's intellectual spinning etc. has been interesting.
Nobody is arguing the ending of slavery was a bad thing. The means of how it got done were though. In only one country was the abolition of slavery even associated with a major bloodbath. Every other country got rid of it via peaceful means. Usually that meant one form of compensated emancipation scheme or another. That's how the Northern states got rid of it. I do not and will never agree that spilling a huge amount of blood was "necessary" in this case when it wasn't "necessary" anywhere else as evidenced by the fact that they actually did get rid of it everywhere else by peaceful means. Of course, slavery was not why the Southern states seceded or why the federal government started a war against them to prevent them from leaving.