Charles W. Ramsdell: Yes, it could have been
prevented!
Slavery,
if legally permitted to do so, could not have taken possession of the
territories. By 1849-1850, the western limits of the cotton growing region had
already been reached.
It
is hard to understand why pro and anti-slavery forces fought over New Mexico
and Utah territories. In both regions the climate and the soil would have made
cotton cultivation nearly impossible. Much of the area in both regions is
either plateau or mountainous. Possibly California could have had slavery but
California had already decided in 1850 to exclude slavery.
Why
should pro and anti-slavery people have fought so bitterly over Kansas and
Nebraska? Certainly cotton could not have been grown in either, or it was not
grown in the nearby areas in Missouri.
By
1860, slavery was on its way to extinction (vanishing). There was every
indication of increased production and lower price levels for cotton. As the
new lands of the southwest came into production, the price of cotton would have
been dropped and with it, the price of slaves. With prosperity gone, and his
slaves an increasing burden, the plantation and slave-owner would have had to
free his slaves or face economic ruin.
In
summary, it seems plain that slavery had reached its height by 1860 and must
shortly have begun to decline. It could not expand into the western
territories, and it would have become unprofitable where it already existed.
Instead, it was destroyed at a terrible cost to the whole country.
Henry
V. Jaffa: No, the Civil War could not have been avoided!
Wasn't
there the possibility of slavery being extended to the employment of slaves in
other occupations. As a matter of fact, slaves were already being used for a
large variety of jobs other than cotton cultivation before 1860. In 1860, about
500,000 slaves lived in southern towns and cities or were engaged in work not
directly connected with agriculture. Some southerners believed that slaves
could be employed in factories. They were convinced that slaves could be
trained in all necessary skills and would provide a cheaper and more manageable
form of labor than free whites.
What
Ramsdell was really thinking about was that the Negro was a kind of domestic
animal, limited in usefulness like a horse or a mule. In the mountain areas of
the West, slaves could have been employed as miners, as slaves were employed by
the Romans in ancient times. If slavery could have been kept alive by employing
slaves as industrial and mining workers until the end of the 19th century, then
slavery would have been given a new lease on life. Recent studies have shown
that slavery was not declining economically, but was, in fact, increasing in
profitability.
Slavery
was profitable to the whole South. The continuing demand for labor in the
cotton belt insured returns to the breeding operations on the less productive land
in the seaboard and border-states. In Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland and
Missouri slavery would not have died out because the employment of slaves in
these states plus the sale of surplus Negroes raised there, maintained the
profitably of slavery.
Slavery
had not reached its natural limits by 1860. When the free and slave states
battled over the question of whether slavery should be allowed into the
territories they were not be allowed into the territories they were not fighting
over a meaningless question.
Source: google
Could the American Civil War have been avoided? By Daniel Hannan US politics Last updated: February 9th, 2014
More than one monstrous war is marked in anniversary this year. A hundred-and-fifty years ago, Union forces were pressing their advantage in Tennessee and opening a new front in Louisiana. The Confederacy's last real chance of victory had been lost at Gettysburg the previous summer, but few were ready to admit it. The war had already claimed more than 600,000 lives – equivalent, in proportionate terms, to six million Americans today, or 1.2 million Britons – yet the South would fight on for another 14 months, showing a heroism in defeat that would, in later years, come to sanctify an unworthy cause.
I am on a mission to promote the Anglosphere, and it took me, for about 12 hours over the weekend, to the Confederate capital: Richmond, Virginia. Stomping the chilly streets, I was struck by how excruciating the decision over secession must have been for Virginians. A short stroll from Jefferson Davies's White House is the state capitol, designed by Thomas Jefferson. Not far in the other direction is the church where Patrick Henry gave his "Liberty or Death" speech. How mortifying for the heirs of Washington and Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, to have to repudiate the country whose leadership they once assumed as their right.
We tend to think of the South hurtling into war with the rebel yell on its lips, as in Gone with the Wind. Perhaps that's how it happened in some places; but Virginia held back, conflicted, until ordered to join the federal attack on the secessionists. The state's ambivalence was personified by Robert E. Lee, who turned down command of the Union armies before resignedly offering his services to the Confederates. Lee called secession "a calamity" and slavery "a moral evil" but, when the moment came, he could not bring himself to draw sword against Virginia.
Might slavery have been abolished without bloodshed? It's hard to say. The ban on the import of new slaves would eventually have finished the institution, but at a price of decades of suffering for those already in bondage. Peaceful manumission, as had happened much earlier in Britain, was the obvious alternative, but the slave-owners were in no mood to sell. Then again, had they been able to foresee the future, they would surely have grabbed at compensated abolition.
The Greek tragedians understood that poignant sorrow requires a measure of missed opportunity. The American Civil War saw many good men, acting from sincere motives, leading their compatriots to a slaughter whose extent no one had imagined possible.
"Was it needless death after all?" asked W.B. Yeats in a different context. Probably. That's what makes the whole thing so exquisitely sad.
UPDATE:
James Bennett has some interesting thoughts, which are worth sharing: Fascinating post as usual. This is
a great question – of course the war could have been avoided, or at least
postponed, but like most wars, at what cost? Lincoln tried very hard to get slave owners to accept compensated
emancipation, but they refused, even in Delaware where there were very few
slaves. Of course the Southerners should have negotiated a peace right
after Gettysburg and Vicksburg, but they would not give up their dream of
independence. Sunk cost is hard enough to write off in money, but even
harder to write off lost lives.
A reasonable peace in July
1863 would have included compensated emancipation for any slave in bondage as
the date of secession,
Federal assumption of at least a fraction of the value of Confederate bonds,
and a period in which Confederate money could be exchanged for Federal notes at
a reasonable market rate, as well as a Federal pension to disabled Confederate
veterans. All this would have been less expensive than fighting to the
end of the war. It would have insured that the South could have entered
the postwar era with the capital to establish an industrial economy to replace
the plantation economy. In return the South would have had to accept the
separate statehood of West Virginia and probably the other Unionist mountain
areas like East Tennessee, and probably also allowing the black majority areas
to form separate states of their own. All this with the wisdom of
hindsight!
Comments
The article “How Lincoln Could Have Prevented the Civil
War” is the best article I’ve found, because it shows the failure of both
sides. Lincoln was wrong to hold that secession was illegal. Up to that point,
the States had every right to assume that they were sovereign. Lincoln was the
first RINO to abandon the Constitution, Bill of Rights and the founding
documents. His offer to “buy out” the
slave-owners was reasonable and the slave-owners should have taken that deal. A
transition period to replace slaves could have been arranged. Slaves could have
been required to earn their freedom by working another 2 years. That would have given the plantation owners
time to recruit starving Irish families to come to work for food and
lodging.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
No comments:
Post a Comment