[x]

One of my profs back in the 70s, Eugene Genovese, was an out-and-out communist.

But he argued (quite persuasively) that slavery would have fallen of its own weight without a civil war, probably within another generation.

Genovese liked the antebellum South because he saw it as an alternative to capitalism. I believe he became something of a conservative in his later years.

Stanley Engerman taught at the same university as Genovese for many years. With Robert Fogel, a Nobel Prize winning economist, Engerman wrote Time On the Cross, a book that argued that slavery was indeed profitable and wasn't going to go away any time very soon. The book was and is very controversial, but the argument is worth considering.

[AnAmericanMother]

I didn't get the impression that he liked it particularly.

It's the alternative view that I was interested in - sort of swimming against the tide.

My ggg grandfather was a sharp cookie, banker and investor, London cockney born, so something of an outside observer.