Can there be a successful banning of slavery in the CSA region without a war?

Can there the CSA ban slavery

  • Yes

    Votes: 24 53.3%
  • No, for constitutional reasons

    Votes: 7 15.6%
  • No, the planters controlled the government too much

    Votes: 14 31.1%

  • Total voters
    45
The numbers of escaped slaves before the ACW was never even close to enough to end slavery. It wasn't that easy to escape. They could get past the plantation owners easy enough but there were also slave patrols, dogs and bounty hunters to evade and very few knew the land more than 20 miles from home, at the most. There was in effect a general strike because 1) The Union armies were near at the end of the war 2) Most of the overseers and plantation owners were in the army or dead 3) Which meant that you had a lot of plantations run by women at the end most of whom were not capable physically or mentally to try and control hundreds of men on their own.

That's why I was talking about after the ACW. If we presuppose an early CSA victory, what you say would be true, say a CSA victory at 1st Bull Run that leads to a march on DC. But most timelines imagine a CSA victory several years in.

IOTL the issue of escaped slaves was enough to enrage both slaveowners and abolitionists for decades. If the scale of the number of escapes keeps growing, as they did in Brazil IOTL....
 
That's why I was talking about after the ACW. If we presuppose an early CSA victory, what you say would be true, say a CSA victory at 1st Bull Run that leads to a march on DC. But most timelines imagine a CSA victory several years in.

IOTL the issue of escaped slaves was enough to enrage both slaveowners and abolitionists for decades. If the scale of the number of escapes keeps growing, as they did in Brazil IOTL....

Why? After the war the men would go back and so would the slave patrols. Some of the slaves would be gone in 1864 but the huge numbers didn't start until after Sherman took Atlanta. You would have some increase in escapes because the US wouldn't enforce the fugitive slave laws.
 
Which states are likely to spend money for such a purpose? These are states were'nt willing to spend much money on internal improvements for God's sake.

They could change their positions on topics. The states had been burned by the previous canal and railway busts and the state constitutions in many were amended to prevent government money going into speculative projects. This means that they most likely leave certain projects to private industry, which we know can lobby governments to change things if they are successful.

We know there is a glut of cotton on the world market in the 1870s which will depress the Confederate economy and there is also the blight of the boll weevil will eventually immigrate up from Mexico. King Cotton is not going to remain 'king' and that within an independent Confederacy a new economic equilibrium and model will eventually emerge within a decade of secession.

Money works its ways into government and then works government. Governments may amend and then unamend, tax and untax as necessary. From another thread we know that the Confederacy was industrializing and that may continue to grow at the expense of agriculture. The war definitely showed that a cash crop dependent state can not necessarily feed itself during war. There should be an increase in staple grains and corns being planted since access to the farms of the North will probably be closed for a few years.
 
They could change their positions on topics. The states had been burned by the previous canal and railway busts and the state constitutions in many were amended to prevent government money going into speculative projects. This means that they most likely leave certain projects to private industry, which we know can lobby governments to change things if they are successful.

We know there is a glut of cotton on the world market in the 1870s which will depress the Confederate economy and there is also the blight of the boll weevil will eventually immigrate up from Mexico. King Cotton is not going to remain 'king' and that within an independent Confederacy a new economic equilibrium and model will eventually emerge within a decade of secession.

Money works its ways into government and then works government. Governments may amend and then unamend, tax and untax as necessary. From another thread we know that the Confederacy was industrializing and that may continue to grow at the expense of agriculture. The war definitely showed that a cash crop dependent state can not necessarily feed itself during war. There should be an increase in staple grains and corns being planted since access to the farms of the North will probably be closed for a few years.

So they put their slaves into factories, they were already experimenting with that. Remember these people fought and died to preserve slavery, they certainly won't give it up in a mere decade or two.
 
So they put their slaves into factories, they were already experimenting with that. Remember these people fought and died to preserve slavery, they certainly won't give it up in a mere decade or two.

We are talking about years here anyway. Also not ALL of the people fought for slavery and things change within a decade or two. Not all the fire-brand secessionists at the constitutional convention in Montgomery were elected to Congress in Richmond. Views and things change with time.

I'm getting the opinion that you are not liking the way the poll is going.
 
We are talking about years here anyway. Also not ALL of the people fought for slavery and things change within a decade or two. Not all the fire-brand secessionists at the constitutional convention in Montgomery were elected to Congress in Richmond. Views and things change with time.

I'm getting the opinion that you are not liking the way the poll is going.

A decade or two? People don't fight and die for a cause and then in a mere decade or two give it up. Too many people would be asking why they fought the war in the first place if they did what the Yanks wanted anyways? All those deaths would be in vain. There is NO chance of that happening that quickly.
 
A decade or two? People don't fight and die for a cause and then in a mere decade or two give it up. Too many people would be asking why they fought the war in the first place if they did what the Yanks wanted anyways?
Presumably abolition would be accompanied by a major rhetoric shift about why the South secceeded in the first place; most likely there will be less and less discussion of slavery and more emphasis on State's Rights.
 
We are talking about years here anyway. Also not ALL of the people fought for slavery and things change within a decade or two. Not all the fire-brand secessionists at the constitutional convention in Montgomery were elected to Congress in Richmond. Views and things change with time.

I'm getting the opinion that you are not liking the way the poll is going.

In fact, the fire-brand secessionists who made to Montgomery had little to no influence.
 
Presumably abolition would be accompanied by a major rhetoric shift about why the South secceeded in the first place; most likely there will be less and less discussion of slavery and more emphasis on State's Rights.


The problem is that "State's Rights" was basically just a code word for slavery. A decade or two is far too short of a timespan.
 
The problem is that "State's Rights" was basically just a code word for slavery. A decade or two is far too short of a timespan.

I think its a code word only in your code book.

There is nothing wrong with considering that perspectives on slavery may change in a decade or two. As mentioned before, not everyone rallied around the colours in the defense of slavery. There will be a lot of things that the South will have to reevaluate how they do things.
 
I am always amazed that people can convince themselves that a people who went to war to maintain slavery would easily and quickly decide to emancipate their slaves.
 
I am always amazed that people can convince themselves that a people who went to war to maintain slavery would easily and quickly decide to emancipate their slaves.
People do not. The war was only about maintaining slavery for a few.


For the most part, seceding states as a whole did not want to see a violation of the rights of states in the form of an abolition of slavery.

Most individual people, on the other hand, did not own slaves or only owned a few as house servants &c., and thus were mainly unaffected by slavery. The issue for them would be about about federal encroachment in general. Obviously, this was untrue for large slave owners, but there were only a few of them and the CSA was a democracy.

I'm not saying most people in the CSA were opposed to slavery. Only that for most, it was not an issue.


But really, the issues of states' rights and slavery cannot be separated in a discussion of the causes of the ACW.
 
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