You write too well not to know that a number of nations in the West ended slavery several decades after the Civil War here ....one of which Brasil had exponentially more slaves than we had here.
And that said war probably contributed to that accelerated demise of slavery in the West.
I agree though that after Britain ended slavery that the handwriting was on the wall and that cooler heads should have found a way to phase it out here but between sanctimonious Yankees and hotheaded Southerners and all the cultural bad blood between them anyhow besides slavery that it did not happen but I wish it had.
It should be noted though that all those folks on both sides were racists by today’s lofty benchmarks including even the radicals.
Likewise, the South did not reimpose slavery..hardly though they did organize to re enfranchise whites and send the occupation forces home and limit black enfranchisement. They were afraid of too much black political power. It's a sticky situation. Just give up and let blacks rule the South? that is exactly what would have happened and how would that have turned out? Would that have been what northern whites wanted or just what northern radicals might have liked to have had to exploit to their own ends? Blacks run nearly every Southern city of note today. Come down and see for yourself and let me know what you think. These issues are so damned hard. Folks spout what they believe to be the correct answer...the backslapping, "yep I love black folks here in rural Wisconsin" answer but yet they ignore harsh realities, human nature and glaring empirical observations staring them down in the real world.
I don't have the answers but I'm living the problems....
I blame the cotton gin too....invented by a Yankee..lol
sorry though I just don't pass every notion thatb pops into my head as to how it relates to minorities and identity politics
the truth is what it is
Why so much energy to demonize the South and 150 year old slavery and yet ignore other slavery and the sharp decline of black culture the past 40 years accompained by a rise in racist black attitudes to whites?
I do not know one white supremacist personally, not one. yet I see rampant and institutional racist attitudes by blacks towards whites and that is tolerated by too many folks same as blacks calling one another ni&&er.
Yet instead, let's drone on and on about how bad slavery was and Southerners are wicked etc....and for God's sake let's not judge those wicked old southerners by the times they lived in
Never mind the 1000 pound gorilla in the room. The South bashing barrage on this forum from about 30-40 loud freepers has always seemed an ill fit here.
Good post. What would have happened to America if we had had universal suffrage from day one? What would America look like if participants at the Constitutional Convention had been “balanced” in terms of race and gender?
These are hard questions, as you correctly noted. They’re also questions we aren’t permitted to discuss.
Noy exactly true. Many more slaves were imported to Brazil than to America, something like 40% of all the slaves taken from Africa.
But Brazilians had a less "race" focus on slavery. In particular the children born of a white father and black mother were almost always freed, and usually their mother too. Over time, especially after new blood from Africa was stopped, slaves dropped as a percentage of the total population.
Best I can figure is that at emancipation in 1888 slaves were 15% of a total population of 15M, or about 2.2M. This compares with about 4M in the US in 1860.
all those folks on both sides were racists by today’s lofty benchmarks including even the radicals.
Again, mostly but not entirely accurate. There were northern abolitionists who considered blacks to be absolutely equal, and showed it by their actions.
I cannot disagree with most of your points. We are still trying to deal with the consequences of the abolition of race-based slavery, 150 years later. It should not surprise us if those faced with the actual situation found it even more difficult to handle.