Thesis: slavery in the American south was not phasing out on its own.

Economics, 10th Edition, Paul Samuelson, 1976, page 783:

"The newer farmlands of the Mississippi afforded a high marginal-product to the slaveowners. . . . . Hence, the Invisible Hand of competition caused the tidewater regions to specialize in the production and reproduction of slaves, for sale to the fertile lands westward."
And therefore, it seems to me, that the people who opposed the expansion of slavery were kind of in the right and may have had a pretty good understanding of what was going on.
 
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http://vanderbilthistoricalreview.com/expansion-of-slavery/

' . . . When northern congressmen fought against the annexation of Texas, they did so because it requested to be a slave state. They didn’t intend to end slavery in the United States; they didn’t intend to launch a national abolitionist campaign. They simply feared, as former President John Quincy Adams warned his supporters, that the annexation of a slave-holding territory as vast as Texas would undermine New England’s political power forever. . . '
It's definitely a challenge. But maybe we can find a POD or two to get an earlier and better end to slavery.
 
You're right. Slavery was going nowhere anytime soon - and we're talking about the cotton plantation economy as well as any slave dependent, labor intensive industry that eventually takes off in Virginia or wherever.

The dumb, tired, old meme that slavery disappears peacefully in a few years after 1865 needs to die.
 
You're right. Slavery was going nowhere anytime soon - and we're talking about the cotton plantation economy as well as any slave dependent, labor intensive industry that eventually takes off in Virginia or wherever.

The dumb, tired, old meme that slavery disappears peacefully in a few years after 1865 needs to die.
Especially as Brazil with its more fluid understanding of race only abolished it in 1888 and it resulted in a coup against their Emperor and the declaration of the republic a year later.
 
I think the fact that forced labor is still used today, including in the United States, disproves the notion that it has somehow become "uneconomical." It would be more apt to say that we've just found ways of making it invisible to most of society.
 
In "Decades of Darkness", it's still alive in the 1930s. Even in states that didn't have slavery IOTL.

To be fair though, by DoD's 20th century the US also had very strong ideological reasons to maintain slavery as well as economic ones. Which, to be sure, is not really that different to OTL's American South...
 
Especially as Brazil with its more fluid understanding of race only abolished it in 1888 and it resulted in a coup against their Emperor and the declaration of the republic a year later.
Wrong, the coup was only related to slavery in as much as the few supporters of republic expected tons of lasting widespread outrage from slavery being abolished, which failed to materialize in extent or degree and the government pretty effectively managed to appease what did happen. That success itself was what actually ended up being one of the main factors of the coup attempt.
 
I think the fact that forced labor is still used today, including in the United States, disproves the notion that it has somehow become "uneconomical." It would be more apt to say that we've just found ways of making it invisible to most of society.

for example . . .

For Youths, a Grim Tour on Magazine Crews

New York Times, Feb. 21, 2007
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/us/21magcrew.html

‘ . . . In 1987, during the Congressional investigation of the industry, the Senate committee reviewed the records of one company and found that of its 418 sellers, 413 had finished the year in debt to the company, even though the company itself had reported large annual profits. . . ’
Essentially being treated as indentured servants. And this is young adults who are American citizens, although they are often from lower-income families and almost always far from home.

And apparently, some of these “mag crews” essentially use enforcers against their own employees. Holy shit. All this just to sell some damn magazines? Yes. Perhaps showing that the mob method of economic organization is more common than we’d like to admit.

So, if you meet a young person selling magazines, be kind. Be careful because some of them will steal from you. Maybe offer them some free food, or a ticket home.
 
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Wrong, the coup was only related to slavery in as much as the few supporters of republic expected tons of lasting widespread outrage from slavery being abolished, which failed to materialize in extent or degree and the government pretty effectively managed to appease what did happen. That success itself was what actually ended up being one of the main factors of the coup attempt.
Alright. And in any case would nobody have reinstated slavery as it became bad PR which it already became enough for the Royal Navy to intervene. What we can say however is that Brazil only abolishing slavery in 1888 with a less clear line between black and white shows how an organic abolition of slavery in the Antebellum South would've taken yet another generation longer than in Brazil. I'm actually surprised that nobody calls the Southern plantations by other names like haciendas or latifundias. A surviving CSA would've been a very big banana republic that just happens to speak English. It's true that the South needed some kind of castrastrophic revolution to transform from an agricultural planter economy into a modern industrial society. Air conditioning and ubiquitous electronic media to broadcast epically bad PR into every living room for breakfast (TV) also helped matters.
 
And yet . . .

There really is a case to be made for running a company on the up-and-up and treating your employees right. And society-wide, there really is a case to be made for building a large and vibrant middle class.

It’s just not a slam dunk case.
 
And therefore, it seems to me, that the people who opposed the expansion of slavery were kind of in the right and may have had a pretty good understanding of what was going on.

I'd say that you'd have the opportunity to make a solid argument. You should elaborate on it more. It seems to me that, given that the planters were convinced that slavery needed to spread westward or become unviable, there's certainly some limits to its staying power. I think that once the system gets hemmed in, its going to fail eventually.

The dumb, tired, old meme that slavery disappears peacefully in a few years after 1865 needs to die.

Why?
 
I'd say that you'd have the opportunity to make a solid argument. You should elaborate on it more. It seems to me that, given that the planters were convinced that slavery needed to spread westward or become unviable, there's certainly some limits to its staying power. I think that once the system gets hemmed in, its going to fail eventually.



Why?
It wasn't exactly because the arid landscapes of Utah and New Mexico would breathe a new economic viability into slavery. It was about representation in congress and sectional domination. Slavery was threatened by economics, but by the north's economics, and demographics. This was understood at the time:

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I said it has to die because in no scenario will the CSA secede to protect slavery only to surrender it.
 
It wasn't exactly because the arid landscapes of Utah and New Mexico would breathe a new economic viability into slavery. . .
The economist Paul Samuelson is talking about the coastal regions of Virginia, North Carolina, etc., selling slaves to Mississippi. I agree that the slaveocracy would have eventually ran out of new farmland, but it would have been a heck of a lot later than 1865.
 
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Slavery/forced labor is economic in certain circumstances, but only certain circumstances. In many slave agricultural establishments, the work was sufficiently unpleasant that you couldn't get free laborers to do it at any price, certainly not for what you would cost out slave labor at. At some point skilled labor needs literacy and numeracy, which is an issue for the slave owners. The bottom line is that slaves will work just hard enough to avoid physical punishment, and not one bit more. When you start to add incentives, like paying slaves for extra stuff, a lot of things change - although buying some personal luxuries is nice, the biggest reason slaves would accept a money incentive was to potentially buy themselves (and their families) freedom. If that option is not there, then while some money incentive works, its limited. A free laborer is essentially unlimited in their incentive - they can buy a house, open their own business, whatever, so they have incentives to work harder and produce more.

That is not to say that slavery in industry is impossible, but rather that slave/forced labor is inefficient and becomes more so the more skilled the task is. Any slave is valuable, and skilled craftsman or other highly trained slaves even more so. In a south still in the USA, any industries based on slave labor will lose out competitively to industries based on free labor in the north. In an independent CSA, the picture of an economy based on agriculture means a very weak economy.
 
I said it has to die because in no scenario will the CSA secede to protect slavery only to surrender it.

I disagree. There's many downsides to slavery, and they're especially acute if you're surrounded by neighbors that are both more powerful than you and don't approve of slavery. Simply put, the South seceded because they were convinced that blocking the spread of slavery would destroy their system. However, a successful secession would by its very nature block the spread of slavery.
 
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