this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2024
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Your argument leaves out something that strikes me as important. That many slavers considered slavery a morally right thing to do. Slaves were considered livestock at the time. The argument to abolish slavery, to the slavers, amounted to freeing the cows. Slavery was wildly profitable not only for those who benefitted from their labor, but also the buying and selling of slaves. They went to war to keep slaves, period. There was no natural end, except by force.
Again, my point isn't that the slavers would be convinced. It's that they would be politically and economically marginalized by the progress of industry, as they had been elsewhere in the country, and elsewhere in the world, at the time, until they had no power to resist abolition.
The war was absolutely over slavery, and it can be argued that the cultural attachment of the South to racial chattel slavery meant things were always going to boil to a head - the intermittent outbursts of violence against 'Yankee' industry in the South being a prime example of the kind of radical agrarianism that could have prevented development of the South into an industrial society that would reject slavery - but the base idea was not absurd. Slavery had met a natural end elsewhere by the mechanisms described. Whether it is moral to attempt to 'wait it out' like that is a different conversation entirely, of course - my point is just that industrialization kills chattel slavery, and it was not strange for moderate abolitionists to see and latch onto that.
You seem to want to push this narrative that leaving slavery alone would have led to a natural conclusion. Are you minimizing slavery? I've seen a lot of arguments lately about similar things, such as Hitler wasn't as bad as Churchill. What's your agenda?
Man, I said numerous times, including in that very fucking comment, that leaving slavery alone in the South would not have necessarily killed it. I outlined why moderate abolitionists believed that it would, and why it's not an inherently absurd idea. Fuck's sake.
It is absolutely an absurd idea, and any modern "abolitionists" who say otherwise are pushing an agenda. Do you watch conspiracy videos?
Okay. Europe and the Northern states don't exist. Got it.