Realistically, how long could slavery have lasted had the south won the civil war?

[KrazyHorse]

Re: "'

Originally posted by VJ

Why would the mechanization be developed if slavery would still be allowed somewhere (and that "somewher" would be where the production would eventually be outsourced) ? Consider the Roman empire and it's technological stagnation.

Don't be ridiculous. The South wasn't going to feed the entire developed world.

[Apocalypse]

It would probably last until shortly after the poor farmers in the south learned they weren't going to get really cheap slaves to help them out since the rich farmers wanted to stay that way.

[Barnabas]

maybe a pseudo apartheid system would have remained far longer than slavery?

[mrmitchell]

Enough thinking about it leads me back to the same conclusion:

After secession, the war was inevitable. Therefore, yes Dissident, this is a dumb question.

As VJ pointed out, society would perpetuate slavery in the South eternally, or at least until outside forces pushed a change.

This is pretty much what actually happened: From the first slaves being brought into the country in colonial days, until 1861, there was basically no change in the South. There were always rich plantation owners with slaves, poor whites struggling on subsistence farming, and black slaves. Outside forces (abolitionists, Lincoln's election, the war) forced the end of slavery.

[SlowwHand]

It's estimated that slavery would have gone away within 5 years. The South sededed because they didn't like the North sticking their big honkers into their business.
No, I don't have a source to quote. Believe it or not, it makes no difference to me. It's a dead issue.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Brachy-Pride
maybe a pseudo apartheid system would have remained far longer than slavery?

Indeed. What would be a good name for that? Jim...uh...maybe Jim Crow. That has a nice ring to it.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
It's estimated that slavery would have gone away within 5 years.

[Odin]

I'd say around 20 years, mechinization would of surely killed the "peculiar institution."

[Dr Strangelove]

Estimated by whom? Using what criteria? Slavery continued in Spanish America and Brazil for another 30 to 40 years, until worldwide public opinion coupled with guerilla warfare forced Spain and Brazil to liberate their slaves. Even as these countries were outlawing slavery Belgian interests in Africa began establishing slavery in the Belgian Congo. Slavery continued in the Portugese African colonies as well. Public pressure, primarily from Great Britain and France eventually forced those countries to clean up their acts. Slavery continued in Saudi Arabiaand Ethiopia until the 1950s. It is claimed that slavery still exists in Mali and Mauritannia.

I doubt that the Confederacy would have knuckled under to mere public pressure as easily as Belgium, nor do I believe that southern blacks would have been able to sustain a protracted gueriila campaign as did the Cubans. Once the Suez Canal made Indian cotton economically available to Europe it is possible that Abolitionist might have organized a boycott against southern cotton putting a severe economic pinch on the Confederacy. Historically England used various means to subsidize Indian cotton from 1865 on, putting cotton from the American South at a disadvantage, and very much hampering the post-war recovery of the American South. Despite this the American cotton industry survived, largely because northern American textile factories continued to buy southern cotton. If the Confederacy had survived though it's possible that the United States would have favored the importation of Indian cotton. Would the planters of the South have found other buyers for their goods? Perhaps textile manufacturers in France, Germany and other European nations would have been eager to buy Confederate cotton, perhaps not.

Another factor to consider regarding the continuation of slavery in the (hypothetically surviving) Confederacy would be the influence of the Yankee abolitionists and the underground railway on the slave population of the Confederacy. The independence of the South would have pretty much nullified the Dred Scott decision, and it is likely that slavery would not have continued in the border states for long. It's very doubtful that the US would have returned escaped slaves to their Confederate owners. The Confederacy might have hemorraghed slaves or might have used the issue as a causus belli. Unless you've stuidied the era you have no idea how important Dred Scott was to the psyche of southern slave owners. Many southern newspapers touted the case as the end of abolutionism, believing that the decision could be made to force "free states" to accept slavery within their borders. Yeah, that's how much "states rights" really meant to those clowns. In their minds states had the right to legalize the owning of humans as property, but did not have the right to abolish the practice!

In summary the answer to the question as to how long slavery would have continued in the South had the Confederacy survived really boils doawn to whether or not the rest of the world would have collaborated on a boycott of Confederate products. Without such active steps against the South slavery very well might have continued well on into this century. Even in the face of a concerted boycott Southerners might still have chosen proverty over the humiliation of having to lower themselves to the same station as their slaves.

[Whoha]

Originally posted by Eli
The mechanization of farming tasks would surely have killed slavery.

but that didn't happen until excess labor was gotten rid of in any event. It requires an initial capital investment that is just not worth it to someone with free labor. Now as to whether competition from protected farmers that did make the investment would drive the slavers out of business is another thing, but again they would just protect themselves assuming the related textile industries moved to the south.

[SlowwHand]

Causes of the Civil War
"Reminiscences Of The Civil War", (Chapter I)
By John B. Gordon, Maj. Gen. CSA


I apprehend that if all living Union soldiers were summoned to the witness stand, every one of them would testify that it was the preservation of the American Union and not the destruction of Southern slavery that induced him to volunteer at the call of his country. As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty per cent. of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution.

Yes, this is from a Southerner that was there.
I could go get you references forever, from both sides of the question, that essentially all validate each other's studies, but screw that idea becuase I've done it so many times it's boring.

Get on with your lives. And Canuk's can pucker up and kiss my ass. You don't do anything anyway.

http://www.civilwarhome.com/gordoncauses.htm

[GePap]

The "mechanization" issue is bullcrap. The main agricultural industries that employed most slaves were not mechanized until much later. Even by 1900 most cotton in the US was still picked up manually by poor black share croppers. Ditto for tobacco.

So slavery could have remained for 40 more years or so, thought its importance in the overall economy of the south would have been in decline all that time.

[mrmitchell]

Mechanization didn't occur in most Southern farms until the 1930s-1960s.

Can anyone help me find a source for that statement? Google is about as useful as a sack of rotten fish.

[GePap]

Originally posted by mrmitchell
Mechanization didn't occur in most Southern farms until the 1930s-1960s.

Can anyone help me find a source for that statement? Google is about as useful as a sack of rotten fish.

Here is a link about cotton agriculture in Georgia:

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2087

Changes brought by the weevil, the New Deal, and World War II (1941-45) continued to threaten cotton and all of those who relied on it. The New Deal's Agricultural Adjustment Act reduced cotton acreage in the state,with the hope of driving up the price of the staple crop, but the acreage reductions also decreased the need for labor.
Tractors, beginning in the 1930s, and mechanical cotton pickers decades later, further disrupted cotton production and the lives of those who worked in the fields. Cotton prices worldwide began to fall during the middle of the century as viable synthetic alternatives decreased demand for the fiber.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by SlowwHand


Yes, this is from a Southerner that was there.
I could go get you references forever, from both sides of the question, that essentially all validate each other's studies, but screw that idea becuase I've done it so many times it's boring.

Get on with your lives. And Canuk's can pucker up and kiss my ass. You don't do anything anyway.

http://www.civilwarhome.com/gordoncauses.htm

Well, uhmmmmm.......................Why ask a Southerner who "was there" what the motivation of the Northern soldier was? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to ask a Northern soldier?
I seem to recall from the excellent Civil War documentary series written and produced by Ken Burns that many Union soliders wrote home about fighting for "the just cause" of freeing the slaves. OTOH Many also wrote about saving the Union or even just being in the Army because so many of their friends were there also. Burns' material came from preserved letters written by actual Union soldiers so it seems to me that his information is most certainly more accurate than General Gordon's.
Pahhh! My folks came over on the Sarah Constance. Immigrant.