[brainstem223]

The internal combustion engine would have put slavery out of business in a generation, and the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizens and soldiers would have been spared, along with the suffering of caused by terrible battle wounds; this weighs against the suffering of slaves; who were freed but became sharecroppers...not an easy rode either. The war caused more far far more carnage than slavery would have had it lingered on...

This weight of history nullifies your arguement.

[raynearhood]

Um, no, and no. Slavery was not an issue of technology, it was an issue of control and hate for a people thought to be less than people. The Cotton Gin did not diminish slavery in any way though it removed the need for extra slaves to pick the seeds from cotton. Just left more for picking from the fields. And what good would the internal combustion engine have done for house slaves.

Carnage was not the problem with slavery. Slavery was the problem with slavery. No man should own another, ever. And no government should promote such practice. The loss of life, though horrible, ended up being necessary because the south would not give up their evil (yes, EVIL) hold on the lives other people any other way.

Slavery would not have ended, though it may have eventually diminished, yet an un-freed people would remain without rights and unequal in the eyes of the law. It another hundred years before a black woman could legally sit next to a whit man on a bus in that tecnologically advancing South of yours. Technology had little to no effect on the hearts of people.

History JUSTIFIES my argument.