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Moral outrage and the U.S. Civil War
(a branch-off of a discussion with Imran, where he maintained that we abandoned slavery for moral reasons)
Yes, slavery as a system was effectively obsolete, which was why it lost. This is going on relatively scant reading, just one thick book covering the social roots of the war in general, plus tidbits picked up here and there (Larry Gonick, for example). Anyway, here's how I understand it: slavery was introduced into the Americas to meet a big demand for labor. There were lots of resources to plunder and all the Indians kept dying. But by the nineteenth century, immigrants were pouring in. Lots of white people looking for what we'd call entry-level employment--but in the South, there was hardly any to be had, because of slavery, and they kept trying to push the system into new territories. White people who wanted to grab land out West did not want half of that land being taken up by a few big landowners and their slaves. That same system, in the South, left a lot of poor crackers on patches of marginal land, who only accepted their lot because the existence of slaves gave them a kind of perverse equality with their social superiors.
Yes, there were abolitionists. At their peak, they comprised perhaps twenty percent of the population. They had disproportionate influence because they were radical, and every rescued slave or rash statement had the whole South worried about a general insurrection. Even the abolitionists were not terribly sympathetic to blacks; with a few exceptions like John Brown, they were inclined to think of the slaves as a kind of abused animal. The general population thought slavery morally degrading (to the white owners, who learned indolence, lust and sadism from it) and a general threat to the Northern way of life. If they'd discovered the humanity of nonwhites, you'd think they wouldn't have been so gungho to drive the Indians into the Pacific at the same time. And they might not have left the South to develop Jim Crow, either.
Slavery itself was not a terribly productive system. The workers didn't get paid, but the master still had to provide them with room, board and clothing, and they had no motivation beyond fear of the lash. They required constant supervision, and often introduced awkward obligations--what do you do with a slave who's too old to work productively, for example? It's essentially serfdom with a resentful foreign peasant class. The stupid system only lasted as long as it did because it was embedded in Southern culture. Also, nobody was quite sure what to do with the blacks when and if they were freed.
Such is my understanding of the situation. I don't really have the energy to dig up sources, just putting this here to explain what I said.
Yes, slavery as a system was effectively obsolete, which was why it lost. This is going on relatively scant reading, just one thick book covering the social roots of the war in general, plus tidbits picked up here and there (Larry Gonick, for example). Anyway, here's how I understand it: slavery was introduced into the Americas to meet a big demand for labor. There were lots of resources to plunder and all the Indians kept dying. But by the nineteenth century, immigrants were pouring in. Lots of white people looking for what we'd call entry-level employment--but in the South, there was hardly any to be had, because of slavery, and they kept trying to push the system into new territories. White people who wanted to grab land out West did not want half of that land being taken up by a few big landowners and their slaves. That same system, in the South, left a lot of poor crackers on patches of marginal land, who only accepted their lot because the existence of slaves gave them a kind of perverse equality with their social superiors.
Yes, there were abolitionists. At their peak, they comprised perhaps twenty percent of the population. They had disproportionate influence because they were radical, and every rescued slave or rash statement had the whole South worried about a general insurrection. Even the abolitionists were not terribly sympathetic to blacks; with a few exceptions like John Brown, they were inclined to think of the slaves as a kind of abused animal. The general population thought slavery morally degrading (to the white owners, who learned indolence, lust and sadism from it) and a general threat to the Northern way of life. If they'd discovered the humanity of nonwhites, you'd think they wouldn't have been so gungho to drive the Indians into the Pacific at the same time. And they might not have left the South to develop Jim Crow, either.
Slavery itself was not a terribly productive system. The workers didn't get paid, but the master still had to provide them with room, board and clothing, and they had no motivation beyond fear of the lash. They required constant supervision, and often introduced awkward obligations--what do you do with a slave who's too old to work productively, for example? It's essentially serfdom with a resentful foreign peasant class. The stupid system only lasted as long as it did because it was embedded in Southern culture. Also, nobody was quite sure what to do with the blacks when and if they were freed.
Such is my understanding of the situation. I don't really have the energy to dig up sources, just putting this here to explain what I said.
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