It always puzzles me when people (not necessarily lost causers) claim that America lost with the WBTS. Yes, I recognize the lazy tendency to bundle every negativity that has occurred since as “Lincoln’s Fault” and I recognize how foolish it is on the face of it.
How can tearing something ever make it better? How could the confeds, who carbon-copied the US Constitution - except for the memorializing of the southron right to own other humans in perpetuity ever hope to be anything superior than the union they rebelled against?
What possible good could ever come from a den of thieves born of insurrection and treason?
Even if Lincoln had been as feckless as Buchanan and let the rebellious south trample on the Constitution and 80 years of cooperative effort and mutual defense, the two countries would be set upon an unavoidable path of conflict. Both the nation and the fledgling upstart had designs on the same territory and it would have been generational war.
Sure we have problems. but it could have been much, much worse.
No, our Founders won both of those.
Nowhere Man: "I know some say you could get slaves to run the machines, but there are some machines that need skilled labor to run them plus the slaves could sabotage them.
Even if I have to pay more for labor, most likely it would be offset, (I'm taking the view of a plantation or business owner here for sake of argument) by someone who would be loyal to me."
It's important to remember that slaves rarely competed for employment against skilled white workers, but they did compete successfully against unskilled workers, hence the name "white trash".
"Trash" are workers so unskilled they can't compete against slaves.
But, the Industrial Revolution produced many jobs for unskilled workers -- factory, transportation and farm jobs.
For example, a typical large farm machine in those days took several men to operate, only one of whom needed to be skilled, the others could be "white trash" or slaves, whichever worked better-cheaper.
Nowhere Man: "The Civil War opened up the first true door to the expansion of runaway government powers."
I don't agree, of course, since there was no major expansion of Federal powers until the Progressive Era beginning about 100 years ago.
But even to the degree what you say is true, the blame for it goes not to Lincoln, but to the Confederacy which provoked, started and declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861.