The U.S. was part of a worldwide movement to end slavery. By worldwide, I mean the parts of the world ruled by Europeans. In 1834, slavery was ended in the British colonies. In 1848, slavery was abolished in the French colonies. Slavery was ended in most of Latin America by 1850, and in Cuba and Brazil in the 1880s. Serfdom, a close cousin to slavery, was ended in Russia in 1861.
Toward the end of the century, there was a convention to end slavery joined in by the Christian and Muslim nations, and also the independent nations of Africa. There were some holdouts in Asia. In 1848, the U.N. abolished slavery worldwide.
Seen in this context, slavery was under siege not only here, but throughout the world. The slave states of the U.S. felt isolated and threatened. Their way of life, as they saw it, was being questioned, and they were being accused of being immoral to own slaves.
Positions hardened on both sides. Instead of viewing the problem as an economic problem, slavery was viewed as a moral problem. In the north, slavery had been ended following our gaining independence from England mostly through gradual emancipation. In the British commonwealth, it was ended through compensated emancipation. These methods of ending slavery softened the economic blow to slave-owners. But, with the hardening of positions, civil war became more and more inevitable.
I’ll talk a little bit about tariffs. Yes, there was the tariff issue. But this was overblown. In the south, everything was blamed on the tariff. The north was growing in population, in industry and in railroads, in banks and financial capital. Why? The tariff! Yes, the tariff favored the north (and domestic manufacturers) at the expense of the south (and also other agricultural regions). The tariff contributed to the Civil War, but wasn’t the primary cause.
Analogously, after the Civil War, every problem of the south was blamed on carpetbaggers and their allied scalawags and free Negroes. So, instead of joining in the emerging world order of capitalism and free and equal citizens, the South created a Jim Crow system, and condemned itself to poverty relative to the rest of the country for another hundred years.
You raise fair points.
You raise fair points.
I tend to be very cynical about any acts of virtue that “coincidentally” financially favours those throating virtue.
In 1848, the U.N. abolished slavery worldwide.
Scuzie?