The Civil War was Preventable

In the 1850s the US found itself at the beginning of the industrial revolution with the Northern states concentrating on manufacturing.  The Southern states were concentrating on agriculture and exports. The Southern states were dependent on salve labor, but the Northern states had plenty of new immigrants to fill their jobs.  Abolitionists had identified slavery as a morally bankrupt practice.  For the South it was a matter of economic survival. Mechanization of agriculture was decades away.  If they had worked together, they may have come up with a plan to accelerate agricultural mechanization and phase out slavery as this equipment became available.  They didn’t do that.

When the South seceded they were within their Constitutional rights. At that time they should have ensured that they would avoid an armed conflict with the North. They didn’t do that. When the South fired on Ft. Sumter, it was a BIG mistake. They should have viewed Ft. Sumter as a US facility of an ally. They didn’t.  After secession, they should have formed an alliance with the US.  They didn’t.  BIG mistake.

Not long after the Civil War, agricultural mechanization began to appear. The South could have functioned as a separate country and had 50 years to convert their slaves into paid farm hands. They could have declared room and board as base income. They could have banned the import of slaves and began to keep slave families together.  If they had changed their approach, they could have made huge improvements in how they treated slaves.  If they had converted from slavery to indentured servitude, they could have offered freedom. Prisoners could have been used to work on farms as they were later on farms and building roads. If you remove the brutality of slavery, their “employment” could have been improved as least to rival the treatment their immigrant manufacturing employees had. If they had attrition, they could have imported immigrant farmers from Europe.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader