WI: US never abolished slavery
- Thread starter Barbarossa Rotbart
- Start date
I had a TL where the British keep the South as a result of victory at Cowpens, ITTL, the South ends up fractured and the Union of Slaveholding States (Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee) become the last states to abolish slavery in 1916. Besides something like that, I guess the Decades of Darkness would be your answer.
Britain wouldn't even have allowed slavery in their sphere of influence beyond the 1830s, as in OTL. The US was already a pariah even then, and the civil war and banning of slavery was pretty much inevitable without major PoDs much, much earlier that removes foreign moral objections to slavery.
Abolition would be accomplished by it's successor state(s) or by the occupying foreign powers.
Well, unless they've kept a backwards slave-based economy rather than industrialising... in which case they're not going to be very powerful at all.
That would be a far more radical change than simply not seeing slavery abolished (at all? nationwide?), though.
You can have slavery be legal in Pennsylvania, but industry develop pretty much as it did OTL with slavery being used only as a matter of prestige - having one's "hired help" instead be slaves, say.
Far easier than keeping the US at the industrial level of mid-19th century Arkansas.
There are economic pressures that come from the existence of slavery, though, that do stunt industrial growth - there's no impetus to industrialise when slavery is available.
Steam power > muscle power.
Steam power -> industrialization.
This is only a problem if "industry" can't do anything better (in effect, cheaper and more reliably) than strong backs can, and the limits of strong backs have been reached by the 19th century.
It's cheaper to have lots of people manufacturing goods than it is to build a machine to do it.
Hence why we still have, you know, sweat shops these days full of small children making t-shirts and trainers.
Hence why we still have, you know, sweat shops these days full of small children making t-shirts and trainers.
If lots of people manufacturing goods was the most profitable way to go, Russia would be the economic powerhouse of the 19th century, not Britain. Picking Russia as the place closest to the unmodern US you're imagining.
Sweat shops exist to avoid paying workers a living wage, not as a matter of machines versus men.
To continue: John Henry's real life counterparts, or a machine? I'll take the machine everyday and two for Sundays.
Similarly, I'll take an iron horse over one of flesh, or a steamship over one driven by oars.
And Russia didn't significantly industrialise on the same level as other countries and start producing a lot until the 20th century. Your point? 
And Russia didn't significantly industrialise on the same level as other countries and start producing a lot until the 20th century. Your point?
That if industry was second to cheap labor, Russia would be kicking tail and Britain in the never-couldas.
But not because slavery existed in Russia (it did not), but because the Russian society was extremely conservative and was not interested in any progress.
Russian serfdom or "not serfdom" supplies pretty much what slavery supplies - cheap labor, docile enough to be forced into working long(er) hours.
So my point is that if this is superior to machines, Russia would have done better - conservative and not interested in progress doesn't mean liking poverty.
I didn't say it was superior to machines. I just said that a society like that has no impetus to move towards machinery and industrialisation.