ACW and the expansion of slavery

I definitely think it's a mistake to think of slavery as being on the way out, in the sense of being inextricably tied agrarian economies making way for industrial structures. Slavery was a remarkably adaptable institution, and in the run up to the war, slaveowners were able to apply it towards industrial purposes. Distilleries, flour mills, foundries, mines, and sawmills in Augusta county employed dozens of slaves individually and hundreds collectively. Even when slaveowners didn't have work playing directly to slaves' comparative advantage, they could still make a tidy profit renting them out for odd jobs around town. Really nasty thinking about a South with slave based industrialization through the thirties, though they'd probably doom themselves over some damn fool thing in the Caribbean.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Some more good stuff from a prior thread on this, via robC:



One fact I find interesting is that, had Britain and America gone to war in the 1850s under Palmerston’s leadership, he would have had none of Lincoln’s hesitancy in making it a war of liberation. “If we are weak in Canada, the Americans are still more vulnerable in the slave states… A British force landed in the Southern part of the Union, proclaiming freedom to the blacks would shake many of the stars from their banner” (Palmerston to Panmure, 24th September 1855)


In Lagos in 1851, they depose the king and install a new one opposed to the slave trade; in 1852, King Gezo of Dahomey is forced to abolish the slave trade and export palm oil instead. It’s not limited to Africa either, as recognition of the Republic of Texas and an independent Brazil is made conditional on abolition of the slave trade. In June 1850, Royal Navy ships start sailing into Brazilian harbours and seizing suspected slavers, fighting pitched battles with Brazilian forts and troops in order to do so.

Whenever Britain has attempted to do something about slavery in the United States, it’s been confronted with the whole strength of the Union (the best example being the 1858 boarding dispute). If the Confederates win, the dynamics of power change. Britain then has a strong anti-slavery North with no love lost for the South, and a weak slave-owning South which is far easier to bully. The idea that British policy would remain the same, or that British "moral influences" would have the same limited effect, is fairly implausible.

Given what has already happened and what we know the British were planning, within a year or so of Confederate independence Britain would have the right of search over both Union and Confederate vessels and there would most likely be an anti-slavery patrol off the coast of Cuba. More speculatively, if the Union attached a ship or two to this squadron, a dispute could quite easily arise from them boarding a Confederate flagged ship- something an unscrupulous Northern President looking for an excuse for a second war might be quite happy to take advantage of.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Yeah, federalism is a bitch. The Americans ended up fighting a war over it and

Palmerston's got a good reason to be so annoyed - the first and only actual execution of an American citizen for carrying on the slave trade is in 1862. Despite the manifest and regular undertaking of sailing slave ships from the South, the lack of Right of Visitation possessed by the RN squadrons simply means that the slave ships can go "US flag" if they need to avoid boarding by the US.

Yeah, federalism is a bitch. The Americans ended up fighting a war over it and everything.:rolleyes:

011_Gettysburg.jpg


To the tune of at least 360,000 or so US dead.

Best,
 
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