Note also it would have been physically dangerousin 1860 for a white guy to say publicly he believed in racial equality and the immorality of slavery in say Kentucky, I suspect it would have been near suicideal in Mississippi or South Carolina
Note also it would have been physically dangerousin 1860 for a white guy to say publicly he believed in racial equality and the immorality of slavery in say Kentucky, I suspect it would have been near suicideal in Mississippi or South Carolina
Well if this was an imaginary setting where there is for some reason no internal political pressure from the rest of the Union, and no economic pressure from the rest of the world, then there's really no reason why slavery would ever come to an end 'just 'cause'. Some people have tried to make arguments that it would be economically unsustainable with industrialisation, but Jared covered this issue in DoD and in any case to my mind this misses the point. By the 1840s or so, the southern states were committed to slavery as part of their identity which they paranoid-ly saw as being threatened, and so they would continue defending the institution of slavery even if it was demonstrably shown to worsen the lives of whites as well as blacks.
But this isn't an imaginary world and you generally can't get away from those factors (DoD does justify their absence fairly well I should point out) so it's not really a sensible question to ask in this form.
I thing we're all overlooking something here, and this is rebellion from below. After all, desegregation and civil rights did not happen by Northern whim.
It's one thing to own and raise slaves on what is basically a medieval-style agricultural plantation and quite another to do so in the late 19th and 20th centuries, in an era of quick communication and universal literacy (slaves can't be kept illiterate forever, their owners' hands will be forced). Communism in particular would spread like wildfire. And when the first rebellion happens, can the North keep looking on impassively as their own countrymen are slaughtered, radicals may they be?
How are you going to force their hands?
Look, you can't be illiterate in modern society if you expect to function at all.
So?
The slave owners don't want their slaves to function in modern society. They want them to do physical labor in exchange for beatings.
They also want to return a profit on their investment.
Which doesn't require their slaves being able to function in modern society, just for them to be capable of picking crops and other forms of uneducated labor.
Modern agriculture is more knowledge-intensive, though, at the very least to operate machinery.
And not all slaves would be agricultural. It's hard to have an housemaid if she can't even read what dishwasher she's using.
Ultimately, though, of all the works I've seen, perhaps one of the most plausible & believable scenario I've seen so far, might actually be TL-191: The C.S.A. does manage to hold onto the practice until 1918, but is forced to stop doing so after TTL's WWI, as one of the conditions for peace.
No it doesn'tThe CSA in TL-191 got rid of slavery in 1881 (or just after) when Britain and France demanded it as a condition for help in the Second Mexican War. It forms the climax of How Few Remain.
I thing we're all overlooking something here, and this is rebellion from below. After all, desegregation and civil rights did not happen by Northern whim.
It's one thing to own and raise slaves on what is basically a medieval-style agricultural plantation and quite another to do so in the late 19th and 20th centuries, in an era of quick communication and universal literacy (slaves can't be kept illiterate forever, their owners' hands will be forced). Communism in particular would spread like wildfire. And when the first rebellion happens, can the North keep looking on impassively as their own countrymen are slaughtered, radicals may they be?
Look, you can't be illiterate in modern society if you expect to function at all. If slaveholders expect to get any kind of use out of their slaves at least basic literacy will be necessary.
Modern agriculture is more knowledge-intensive, though, at the very least to operate machinery.
And not all slaves would be agricultural. It's hard to have an housemaid if she can't even read what dishwasher she's using.