Do you SERIOUSLY think we'd still see slaves on plantations today if the Civil War had not been fought? I don't.
Most of the rest of the world eventually abolished slavery... without having to kill 500,000 of their own people to make it happen. Given the state of our "united" nation today, I'm less and less sure the Civil War was 'worth it'.
Slaves would have been freed, eventually... due to public demand for decency. And, we'd have TWO countries to choose from to live in.
Who knows how the world’s approach to slavery would have progressed? If the civil war didn’t take place, the US may have been very different. A different US makes the world from 1860 forward very different.
You’re saying that the current view of slavery as evil evolved independent of the civil war. That the view of slavery as evil would have grown even without the civil war. That does not logically follow. For all we know, half the country would have still kept slaves forever.
I don’t know and neither do you. However, consider a few things:
1. Slavery was integral to the economy of the South during the antebellum years. Ending slavery meant impovershing the south, at least until other economic bases were developed. Would southern plantation owners really have voluntarily turned themselves into paupers by freeing their slaves?
2. While the Constitution is ambiguous on the matter of slavery (probably due to the Founders’ desire to not allow the issue to derail the ratification), the southern plantation owners saw the Constitution as an implicit endorsement of the practice of slavery. Would you be willing to give up your guns, for instance, if people in other parts of the country deem that gun ownership is immoral? A similar question faced the plantation owners with regard to slavery. I suspect that most posters on here would not give up their guns based on the moral outrage of others, and similarly, slave owners would not voluntarily free their slaves based on the moral outrage of abolitionists.
3. The South was, culturally and economically, very much a separate nation from the North during the antebellum years. The North had an industrial economy based on wage-earning workers, rather than an agricultural one based on slave labor. The Civil War was really an attempt to turn this cultural and economic reality into a political one as well. Given this, would it really make sense to think that slave owners would voluntarily free slaves based on Northern opinion? Keep in mind, the Civil War may have given LEGAL freedom to the slaves, but the culture of slavery persisted in the South.
Cultures and economies do change, so it may be true that slavery could have been ended without warfare. However, I was responding to a poster who questioned whether any of the series of wars we’ve fought has accomplished anything. I’m sure a slave in 1865 who found himself free following the war would have no problem seeing what the Civil War accomplished. I also see very little evidence that, absent war, slavery would have been ended in 1865, or for quite some time thereafter. Therefore, I stand by the assertion that the Civil War was a successful one insofar as it accomplished the goal of freeing the slaves.
Do you SERIOUSLY think we'd still see slaves on plantations today if the Civil War had not been fought? I don't.
Had the Civil War been avoided and slavery survived, it probably wouldn't have lasted long, because economic realities would have killed it.
In the case of cotton harvesting, the slavery model worked seemingly well as long as the cotton was picked by gangs of slaves--a simple, low-skill and low-information task. But the mechanical cotton pickers in use today require much higher levels of intelligence and skill.