How long could slavery in the South have persisted without the war or a different outcome?
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  How long could slavery in the South have persisted without the war or a different outcome?
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Author Topic: How long could slavery in the South have persisted without the war or a different outcome?  (Read 1170 times)
President Johnson
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« on: December 06, 2022, 02:51:22 PM »

If either the Civil War ended in a peace treaty that recognizes the CSA as sovereign state or if Lincoln and Republicans never really moved to abolish slavery after the war. If not outlawed in 1865, how long do you think slavery would have persisted in the South? Into the 20th century? It's actually crazy to think about slavery being around for several more decades.

I think it could have lasted into the progressive era from ca. 1900 to 1920. So similar to when child labor was officially banned in the US.
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Samof94
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« Reply #1 on: December 23, 2022, 08:29:45 AM »

If either the Civil War ended in a peace treaty that recognizes the CSA as sovereign state or if Lincoln and Republicans never really moved to abolish slavery after the war. If not outlawed in 1865, how long do you think slavery would have persisted in the South? Into the 20th century? It's actually crazy to think about slavery being around for several more decades.

I think it could have lasted into the progressive era from ca. 1900 to 1920. So similar to when child labor was officially banned in the US.
Until there's another war and they get invaded by someone else. Or they just rename slavery something else. They saw slavery as a core belief sanctioned by God.
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Cassius
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« Reply #2 on: December 23, 2022, 09:15:46 AM »

Presumably until the full scale mechanisation of agriculture (thus rendering slavery economically uncompetitive).
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Skill and Chance
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« Reply #3 on: December 23, 2022, 12:35:29 PM »

Presumably until the full scale mechanisation of agriculture (thus rendering slavery economically uncompetitive).

You could make a case that happened anytime between 1890 and 1950 depending on the metric.  If an independent Confederacy got involved in WWI, I think the abolition of slavery would be a condition either of military aid from the victorious coalition or of the peace treaty ending the war if they lose, considering every other major player in WWI opposed it.  So, I'm going with the 1910's. 
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I’m not Stu
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« Reply #4 on: March 21, 2023, 07:29:27 PM »

Wouldn't slavery have eventually become economically unfeasible at some point? What about likely boycotts and maybe embargoes?
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gerritcole
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« Reply #5 on: March 21, 2023, 09:59:22 PM »

I think we’re discounting the possibility of a successful slave revolt, the population ratios were so skewed
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President Punxsutawney Phil
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« Reply #6 on: March 21, 2023, 10:01:00 PM »

I think we’re discounting the possibility of a successful slave revolt, the population ratios were so skewed
How so?
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gerritcole
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« Reply #7 on: March 22, 2023, 12:58:36 PM »

I think we’re discounting the possibility of a successful slave revolt, the population ratios were so skewed
How so?

i recall listening to a podacst about the civil war saying the pop ratio between free and enslaved in the south in 1860 was like 1:6 and that was only expanding due to birth rates

 i think that's unsustainable at some point and given the enslaveds access to farm equipment/backwoods weapons i think a riseup occurs, but perhaps you can say the southern states would always have superior firepower, my bad this latter point is purely conjecture on my part
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RINO Tom
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« Reply #8 on: March 22, 2023, 01:04:52 PM »

Eh, I don't think too long.  Even many of the slave-holding Founding Fathers from the South (especially Washington, Jefferson and Madison) would have seen the Confederates' views on slavery as a radical departure from what they were preaching.  Slavery increased dramatically in the mid-1800s, and "The South" of the CSA was way more dependent on it than "The South" before that.  You could use that to argue that this trend would have continued if not interrupted by the Union, but my point is that the cultural attitudes toward slavery in the South were not remnants of the "traditional point of view" - it was a weird, creepy last gasp.

1890s at the absolute latest, and it would be dying.  If 1888 Brazil abolished it ... slavery in America would not have outlived that by too long.
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The Mikado
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« Reply #9 on: March 23, 2023, 10:59:26 PM »


i recall listening to a podacst about the civil war saying the pop ratio between free and enslaved in the south in 1860 was like 1:6 and that was only expanding due to birth rates


...The South was not 85% slave. More like 30%, with a few states (MS, SC, LA) breaking 50% but others like Arkansas and Tennessee being pretty low.
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President Punxsutawney Phil
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« Reply #10 on: March 23, 2023, 11:02:50 PM »

i recall listening to a podacst about the civil war saying the pop ratio between free and enslaved in the south in 1860 was like 1:6 and that was only expanding due to birth rates


...The South was not 85% slave. More like 30%, with a few states (MS, SC, LA) breaking 50% but others like Arkansas and Tennessee being pretty low.
Say the 11 states of the Confederacy were, say, 55% slave or 60% slave in 1860, overall. How much would that have changed?
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The Mikado
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« Reply #11 on: March 23, 2023, 11:04:23 PM »

Anyway I firmly believe that slavery wouldn't be abolished in every state within the 19th century and may have extended deep into the 20th century.

Mass agricultural slavery would definitely be phased out (economically unnecessary by the 1920s-1930s at latest due to the end of the need for that many people working in agriculture) and that that would probably lead to a mandatory deportation to Africa of a bunch of no longer relevant slaves. However, a far smaller but still real domestic slavery sector could continue basically indefinitely. The wealthy would 100% continue to hold slaves as a domestic status symbol. Living in a mansion with 25 in house slaves could easily be a major show of force and economic clout for a South Carolina aristo deep into the 20th century, as distasteful as people from other regions might regard it. Why not? No one ever gives a mechanism for how it suddenly gets abolished as an institution even with agrarian slavery's eventual decline.

Furthermore, it's worth pointing out that areas like Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky would have increasing call for mining in the late 19th/early 20th centuries and it's very easy to imagine slavery transitioning into coal mining.
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The Mikado
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« Reply #12 on: March 23, 2023, 11:05:57 PM »

i recall listening to a podacst about the civil war saying the pop ratio between free and enslaved in the south in 1860 was like 1:6 and that was only expanding due to birth rates


...The South was not 85% slave. More like 30%, with a few states (MS, SC, LA) breaking 50% but others like Arkansas and Tennessee being pretty low.
Say the 11 states of the Confederacy were, say, 55% slave or 60% slave in 1860, overall. How much would that have changed?

I guess it'd be easier to imagine a Reconstruction black government holding in, say, a 65-70% black South Carolina or Mississippi? The states lower on the scale would still have much the same result.
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President Punxsutawney Phil
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« Reply #13 on: March 23, 2023, 11:08:00 PM »

i recall listening to a podacst about the civil war saying the pop ratio between free and enslaved in the south in 1860 was like 1:6 and that was only expanding due to birth rates


...The South was not 85% slave. More like 30%, with a few states (MS, SC, LA) breaking 50% but others like Arkansas and Tennessee being pretty low.
Say the 11 states of the Confederacy were, say, 55% slave or 60% slave in 1860, overall. How much would that have changed?

I guess it'd be easier to imagine a Reconstruction black government holding in, say, a 65-70% black South Carolina or Mississippi? The states lower on the scale would still have much the same result.
I was thinking that the more blacks there are, there might be massive side-effects down the line societally. A south far blacker would have massive consequences.
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Kleine Scheiße
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« Reply #14 on: March 24, 2023, 06:18:53 AM »
« Edited: March 24, 2023, 06:49:06 AM by I AM THE GREATEST AND YOU WILL BOW BEFORE ME! »

i genuinely believe it would still de jure exist but in practice it would've undergone a decline into being something much smaller-scale and much less industrial; take for example the modern use of forced prison labor in the Louisiana state capitol and the various enslavement scandals found still occasionally in the south until the 1950s

public opinion would be on the scale of how english foxhunting is understood today: an antiquated tradition for pretentious bluebloods and nouveau riche posers. i do not think most people's opinions on slavery being right or wrong would change; many in the real-world south believed that slavery was morally wrong but that it was unacceptable for one reason or another to oppose it

slavery would still exist in the south on paper to this day in at least a couple of states, and it would still exist in practice in the sense that we actually have not even yet "abolished" slavery in our real world timeline, but it would have ceased to be the essential basis for the entire southern economy by some point in the early 20th century at the absolute latest

look into fitzhugh if you believe slavery just would've kinda ended. these people wanted to enslave not only the peoples they had already stolen, but also to expand slavery to include other economically disadvantaged groups. there were a non-zero amount of significant and influential people in the united states who believed that slavery needed to be saved by (among other things) enslaving impoverished whites, whose laboring potential they saw as being wasted on having individual liberty

there is actually a serious possibility slavery could have dissipated as described and then come back under another name. i don't even necessarily think that a majority of people today in our actual real world country would say they morally oppose slavery if slavery were described to people in the abstract rather than being called "slavery."

i think people would be very surprised at the percentage of americans who could freely be convinced to support "an economic system where individual laborers are directly owned and managed by private interests, to be paid in sustenance rather than currency" -- people would claim that opposition to this proposal was sensationalism, that companies would never be dumb enough to do that so clearly you must be misunderstanding something, that actually this is a good idea because how else are you going to solve homelessness, that actually this would be good because it would mean fewer people getting "useless" education, that it would be effective in keeping poor people from voting themselves transfer payments, that actually it's not really enslavement if you can technically buy freedom for millions of dollars -- we could keep going, the point is these are not abstract ideas i am coming up with, these are real things i have personally heard right-wingers say in discussions about this topic in our era. these people are out there and you, individually, dear reader, need to be paying very close attention to them.
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Lord Halifax
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« Reply #15 on: March 24, 2023, 06:44:08 AM »
« Edited: March 24, 2023, 06:56:40 AM by Lord Halifax »


Mass agricultural slavery would definitely be phased out (economically unnecessary by the 1920s-1930s at latest due to the end of the need for that many people working in agriculture) and that that would probably lead to a mandatory deportation to Africa of a bunch of no longer relevant slaves.

Where would they go? I doubt European colonial powers would be interested in accepting ex-slaves from the US, importing westernized blacks to Africa seems like asking for trouble.

Not sure whether the Americo-Liberian elite would feel threatened by an influx of poor Black Americans, but it seems like it would undermine the prestige of being Americo-Liberian and the perception that they were superior to the natives which they relied on, even if it would boost their numbers, and the new Americans would want their share of the spoils. They did take a few Afro-Caribbean immigrants until around 1930, but that was much smaller numbers and often people with some education and funds, mass immigration of dirt poor ex-slaves (mostly rural laborers) would have been very different.
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Del Tachi
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« Reply #16 on: March 24, 2023, 08:43:15 AM »

yo I just played a CSA run on Vic3 and had legal slavery until 1894, when I abolished it by decree.  My trade unionists weren't having it.   
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NewYorkExpress
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« Reply #17 on: April 09, 2023, 12:14:02 AM »

Slavery would still be legal in the South. That said, the South probably wouldn't have opposed things like the Civil Rights Act if passed in the 1960's or 1970's in this universe, necessarily. as they would have instead sought a carve-out to protect slavery (maybe granting Slaves the right to vote, etc. in exchange for maintaining the existence of slavery.).

In the present day, slavery likely would be very rare, and restricted to the uber-wealthy (and possibly multinational corporations operating in southern states), but about 99% of southerners do not own a slave, or interact with one in their daily lives, and there are actually more free persons of color in the South than there are slaves, thanks to new laws, that specifically restrict slavery to persons convicted of a serious crime (essentially replacing either the death penalty or life without parole sentences) in most southern states. These laws were largely passed because of the White population's inability to acquire slaves around the time of the Great Depression.
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