[groanup]

"Yes, the great sin of Southern slavery, in my opinion, was not so much the slavery (though I am personally opposed to it) but the racism inherent with it. Indeed, without racism the whole system would have collapsed. The idea that blacks were subservient to whites was what allowed slavery to exist alongside very heartfelt beliefs on liberty and freedom. The legacy of this racism, and not so much the slavery (though the two are closely tied of course) is I think the great tragedy of the American South."

I just love this. You must be about fifteen years old. Do you know that slavery exists to this very day? It must be because of racism. Economics has nothing to do with it.

[Cleburne]

Yes, slavery exists today- it's particulary prominent in Sudan, where Muslim Arabs regularly seize people from the Christian and anamist south and sell them. In this case it's most certainly not mere economics.

Though I would agree that slavery was certainly begun in the South for economic purposes. Tobacco and rice were labor intensive crops, and indentured servants from the British Isles were lousy. So black slaves were brought in. Not cheap, but effecive labor. The racial ideas developed with the settlement and development of the South. But along with these ideas there also developed ideas of freedom and liberty, which were embraced by most Southerners. Yet they viewed blacks as unfit for these new ideas of liberty and freedom. It was already well established that blacks were intended to be subservient to whites, so most people in the South saw little conflict with the ideas of liberty with slavery. I think that if Southerners had not possessed their views of blacks slavery would have been significantly less popular. Certainly the economic system was important- but so was the perception of blacks, especially by those outside of the economy of slavery and slave-supported agriculture.