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To: cva66snipe
As a Southerner, I would like to have believed some of your arguments about slavery going away in 20 years. It may have been abolished in states like Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, but I think in the deep South, states like South Carolina, where the Black population was 45%, it would likely persisted for decades more.
I think the North and Lincoln could have handled things much better, but frankly, slavery was more of a cure on the South. It actually held us back from proper development.
Dividing up our country would not have been good. Had the South won, would it have endured, or would Texas have eventually withdrawn from the Confederacy. Would the South have joined in with the North in fighting tyranny in WWI and WWII?
I do think that reconstruction was a disaster, and directly led to the Jim Crow laws and segregation. Had the South been able to evolve normally, rather than through war, race relations would have been better. However, many Southerners did not want to give up slavery. Many northern states had abolished slavery by setting a date after which a person born could not be a slave. That led to slaves being sold to slave states. The problem for abolishing slavery all at one time was compensating the owners for their property per the constitution.
151 posted on 08/28/2007 5:08:25 AM PDT by GeorgefromGeorgia
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To: GeorgefromGeorgia

Thoughtful post, but I think a couple of your questions are from a wrong perspective or premise.

“Dividing up our country would not have been good. Had the South won, would it have endured, or would Texas have eventually withdrawn from the Confederacy.”

Even if Texas withdrew, it would not necessarily preclude the end of the Confederacy, just as the southern states withdrawing from the Union would not have caused it to cease existence.

“Would the South have joined in with the North in fighting tyranny in WWI and WWII?”

I believe, if there were a Confederacy and a Union, the Union’s entry would follow that of the South’s, if at all.


160 posted on 08/28/2007 6:48:05 AM PDT by Lee'sGhost (Crom! Non-Sequitur = Pee Wee Herman.)
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To: GeorgefromGeorgia
I think the North and Lincoln could have handled things much better, but frankly, slavery was more of a cure on the South. It actually held us back from proper development.

Did you mean curse? Not hardly. It helped establish the south as a competitive. The north used slavery to build it's infrastructure. Once it was in place and the factories up and running it was a liability. The south was approaching that point but not quite there yet.

As for the slaves themselves? They have a heritage to be very proud of. Their work built a nation both north and south just as Jewish slavery by Egypt build some of the marvels of the world. Who's skill and labor did it? :>} The end result in both cases was an advancement in a people that would not have came for centuries otherwise. Meaning slavery resulted in the very advancement in blacks. There would have been no George Washington Carvers without slavery. That is a fact.

Slavery as known in the south would not have lasted past 1890-1900. It would have went the same way as the Company owned Coal Towns. Technology would have made it a liability. For example once strip mining began Coal Towns quickly died. But forms of slavery also existed in the mines yes even state sanctioned. Wars were fought over it. Wars you will not hear about in school or read in many history books.

244 posted on 08/28/2007 12:58:56 PM PDT by cva66snipe (Proud Partisan Constitution Supporting Conservative to which I make no apologies for nor back down)
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