Opinion of Nathan Bedford Forrest

[Bo]

It's results like this that make me think the US should have just left the CSA to itself and let them fester in their economically deprived hellhole.

But, leaving the black population in slavery would be unjustifiable.

God how I wished, we have been occupied now for 145 years. Was it really worth 600,000 lives and the complete destruction of the south? And btw the south had a lot of wealth before Mr. Lincolns war.

So you think that it is unfortunate that most of that wealth was freed as a result of the Civil War?

Um yes I do.

So you're in favor of slavery. Shame!

[cpeeks]

It's results like this that make me think the US should have just left the CSA to itself and let them fester in their economically deprived hellhole.

But, leaving the black population in slavery would be unjustifiable.

God how I wished, we have been occupied now for 145 years. Was it really worth 600,000 lives and the complete destruction of the south? And btw the south had a lot of wealth before Mr. Lincolns war.

So you think that it is unfortunate that most of that wealth was freed as a result of the Civil War?

Um yes I do.

So you're in favor of slavery. Shame!

LOL I never said I was for slavery.

[Frink]

LOL I never said I was for slavery.

Indeed. You said the preferable outcome of the Civil War was that 4 Million Americans should stay in bondage. Nothing AT ALL pro-slavery about such a view.

[??????????]

LOL I never said I was for slavery.

Indeed. You said the preferable outcome of the Civil War was that 4 Million Americans should stay in bondage. Nothing AT ALL pro-slavery about such a view.

Not necessarily, a graduated emancipation would have been preferable to what actually happened.

[Bo]

LOL I never said I was for slavery.

Indeed. You said the preferable outcome of the Civil War was that 4 Million Americans should stay in bondage. Nothing AT ALL pro-slavery about such a view.

Not necessarily, a graduated emancipation would have been preferable to what actually happened.

That would have caused at least several decades of massive miserable suffering and torture for Southern blacks.

[??????????]

That would have caused at least several decades of massive miserable suffering and torture for Southern blacks.

Like reconstruction actually did? I disagree with you assertion, if slavery had slowly been eliminated I highly doubt racial tensions would have run as high as the did with a mass, forced emancipation.

[Bo]

That would have caused at least several decades of massive miserable suffering and torture for Southern blacks.

Like reconstruction actually did? I disagree with you assertion, if slavery had slowly been eliminated I highly doubt racial tensions would have run as high as the did with a mass, forced emancipation.

Blacks were subjected to a lot of hatred, suffering, and torture throughout the South after the Civil War in RL. The difference would have been that blacks were allowed to leave the South (and many did, actually) in RL while they would not have been able to leave if they remained slaves.

[??????????]

That would have caused at least several decades of massive miserable suffering and torture for Southern blacks.

Like reconstruction actually did? I disagree with you assertion, if slavery had slowly been eliminated I highly doubt racial tensions would have run as high as the did with a mass, forced emancipation.

Blacks were subjected to a lot of hatred, suffering, and torture throughout the South after the Civil War in RL. The difference would have been that blacks were allowed to leave the South (and many did, actually) in RL while they would not have been able to leave if they remained slaves.

Yes, the resentment towards blacks after the war was a direct result of reconstruction and the brutal nature in which the federal government treated southerners after the war.

[Bo]

That would have caused at least several decades of massive miserable suffering and torture for Southern blacks.

Like reconstruction actually did? I disagree with you assertion, if slavery had slowly been eliminated I highly doubt racial tensions would have run as high as the did with a mass, forced emancipation.

Blacks were subjected to a lot of hatred, suffering, and torture throughout the South after the Civil War in RL. The difference would have been that blacks were allowed to leave the South (and many did, actually) in RL while they would not have been able to leave if they remained slaves.

Yes, the resentment towards blacks after the war was a direct result of reconstruction and the brutal nature in which the federal government treated southerners after the war.

I seriously doubt that. The South was racist long before the Civil War.

[??????????]

I seriously doubt that. The South was racist long before the Civil War.

Is this what we're getting with our educational system these days?

[Derek]

That would have caused at least several decades of massive miserable suffering and torture for Southern blacks.

Like reconstruction actually did? I disagree with you assertion, if slavery had slowly been eliminated I highly doubt racial tensions would have run as high as the did with a mass, forced emancipation.

Blacks were subjected to a lot of hatred, suffering, and torture throughout the South after the Civil War in RL. The difference would have been that blacks were allowed to leave the South (and many did, actually) in RL while they would not have been able to leave if they remained slaves.

Yes, the resentment towards blacks after the war was a direct result of reconstruction and the brutal nature in which the federal government treated southerners after the war.

I seriously doubt that. The South was racist long before the Civil War.

Keep quoting the dogma of your liberal teacher's union.

[minionofmidas]

Re States:
You do realize that was made impossible by the secession and the war, right? At the end of the war, what percentage of slaves were actually still with their "owners"? There's no hard-and-fast data on the question, but across much of the country the figure wasn't high... and it would have been a grotesque and hugely bureaucratic undertaking to bring them all back. If the place to bring them back to still existed at all.
A gradual emancipation as in the Caribbean would actually have been somewhat more successful... (and if the freedmen themselves had received a compensation too, it might have been even more so) but it took the British central government's massive powers of blackmail to get the slaveholding colonies themselves to aquiesce to it, and the slave states of the US would never have agreed no matter what.

[??????????]

What do you mean "stayed"? Many freedmen stayed very close to their former plantations at least until the great migration.

[minionofmidas]

What do you mean "stayed"? Many freedmen stayed very close to their former plantations at least until the great migration.

Many? Of course *many* did. But not most or anything like it - besides the fact that quite a large minority of slaves were never plantation slaves anyways (but you know that); probably a larger group than it appears at first from census records, too, btw.

During the war, huge amounts of slaves left their homes - they were requisitioned by the CSA government, or left the area when the US Army moved through (frequently travelling with the Army, and eventually being enlisted towards the war's end), etc etc. You want to send all of these people back to what, by war's end, were pretty much their former owners? Provided they were even still alive? That would have been a bureaucratic nightmare... wouldn't even be easy to prove who is who.

[??????????]

I'm only speaking in hypothetical as if the war was negotiated to an end. I realize what you are saying and I agree.

[cpeeks]

LOL I never said I was for slavery.

Indeed. You said the preferable outcome of the Civil War was that 4 Million Americans should stay in bondage. Nothing AT ALL pro-slavery about such a view.

.

I never said that either, quit putting words in my mouth dude.

[Bo]

That would have caused at least several decades of massive miserable suffering and torture for Southern blacks.

Like reconstruction actually did? I disagree with you assertion, if slavery had slowly been eliminated I highly doubt racial tensions would have run as high as the did with a mass, forced emancipation.

Blacks were subjected to a lot of hatred, suffering, and torture throughout the South after the Civil War in RL. The difference would have been that blacks were allowed to leave the South (and many did, actually) in RL while they would not have been able to leave if they remained slaves.

Yes, the resentment towards blacks after the war was a direct result of reconstruction and the brutal nature in which the federal government treated southerners after the war.

I seriously doubt that. The South was racist long before the Civil War.

Keep quoting the dogma of your liberal teacher's union.

Many of my teachers actually dislike unions.

[Frink]

LOL I never said I was for slavery.

Indeed. You said the preferable outcome of the Civil War was that 4 Million Americans should stay in bondage. Nothing AT ALL pro-slavery about such a view.

Not necessarily, a graduated emancipation would have been preferable to what actually happened.

Agreed. I don't necessarily think the political climate would have allowed that to happen anytime soon, though.

[The Mikado]

I'm curious as to States' insistence that slavery would've died on its own.  Even granting that slavery wasn't particularly efficient and that the upper states of the Confederacy had strong considerations of abolition even prior to the war (like Virginia), how do you get from that point A to a point B of all Confederate states abolishing slavery on their own?  It was a useful social control mechanism, and was, after all, a fundamental aspect of life for most of the people that actually ran the South in that era.  I have a tremendously hard time seeing South Carolina, for example, willingly abolishing slavery until the 20th century at least and maybe well into it, even if slavery became less and less practiced over that period.

[cpeeks]

I'm curious as to States' insistence that slavery would've died on its own.  Even granting that slavery wasn't particularly efficient and that the upper states of the Confederacy had strong considerations of abolition even prior to the war (like Virginia), how do you get from that point A to a point B of all Confederate states abolishing slavery on their own?  It was a useful social control mechanism, and was, after all, a fundamental aspect of life for most of the people that actually ran the South in that era.  I have a tremendously hard time seeing South Carolina, for example, willingly abolishing slavery until the 20th century at least and maybe well into it, even if slavery became less and less practiced over that period.

So you think there would still be slaves today?

[The Mikado]

I'm curious as to States' insistence that slavery would've died on its own.  Even granting that slavery wasn't particularly efficient and that the upper states of the Confederacy had strong considerations of abolition even prior to the war (like Virginia), how do you get from that point A to a point B of all Confederate states abolishing slavery on their own?  It was a useful social control mechanism, and was, after all, a fundamental aspect of life for most of the people that actually ran the South in that era.  I have a tremendously hard time seeing South Carolina, for example, willingly abolishing slavery until the 20th century at least and maybe well into it, even if slavery became less and less practiced over that period.

So you think there would still be slaves today?

Maybe not today, and it'd certainly be a much more marginal institution with far less of the big plantations, but I see no reason why domestic slavery wouldn't continue for decades to come.

[cpeeks]

Nah its over by the 1890's at the latest.

[Frink]

Nah its over by the 1890's at the latest.

Why? States Rights would no doubt have reasons for his belief (faulty or not), but I see no argument from you supporting your own POV.

[cpeeks]

Nah its over by the 1890's at the latest.

Why? States Rights would no doubt have reasons for his belief (faulty or not), but I see no argument from you supporting your own POV.

The abolition movement was getting so strong, and I just dont see it lasting much longer in the U.S.

[minionofmidas]

I'm curious as to States' insistence that slavery would've died on its own.  Even granting that slavery wasn't particularly efficient and that the upper states of the Confederacy had strong considerations of abolition even prior to the war (like Virginia), how do you get from that point A to a point B of all Confederate states abolishing slavery on their own?  It was a useful social control mechanism, and was, after all, a fundamental aspect of life for most of the people that actually ran the South in that era.  I have a tremendously hard time seeing South Carolina, for example, willingly abolishing slavery until the 20th century at least and maybe well into it, even if slavery became less and less practiced over that period.

If the price of cotton collapsed as it did in the real tl and no new slaveholding lands are opened up... breeding slaves for export ceases to be a viable proposition. Which, let's face it, had become one of Virginia's and South Carolina's most important cash crops by 1830. And if slavery is ever voluntarily abolished in Virginia, that means so many Free Blacks that it's hard not to see that as a scattering blow to the institution elsewhere too.

It would, of course, have required numerous constitutional crises (which would have ended up expanding the Central Government's constitutional power - much as the war itself did) and major social upheavals and probably some limited US military action, but eventually slavery would have died. It's time was up - what other western countries still practiced slavery by 1860, after all? Brazil's the only one I can think of (and it was abolished there in much the way I described in the 1880s, by which time it had been dying from the inside for a while.) It still wouldn't have been pretty, but it might have been less destructive than the war. And I do stress "might".

That, after all, is why the South considered the election of an anti-slavery administration in Washington to be a seceding issue by 1860.