Slavery and the Industrial Revolution

Posted by terrycan 2 years, 5 months ago to Philosophy

What if the Civil War never happened?
America continued as had. A country of free and slave states. The Industrial Revolution was just beginning.
With increased automation and increased specialized skills would slavery flourish or become impractical?
Would factories and investors own a workforce? Or would slavery die in the new economy?
Let me be clear. I do not support slavery.

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Posted by freedomforall 2 years, 5 months ago

Slavery died out naturally in other countries for exactly the economic reasons you mention.
Lincoln was a war criminal who destroyed America and centralized power in violation of the constitution.
That's why the statists love him so.

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  Posted by terrycan 2 years, 4 months ago
  
  Thank you. I know this is a very sensitive subject.
  
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Posted by mccannon01 2 years, 5 months ago

Gen. James Longstreet said if the Confederacy had won the war, slavery would be gone by 1900 because it was a dying institution.

OK, I read that little nugget a long time ago and just did a search for it and came up empty although there was plenty of evidence Longstreet was not favorable to slavery.

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  Posted by terrycan 2 years, 4 months ago
  
  Interesting. Only an elite minority were slave owners. Many whites lived in poverty in the South.
  
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    Posted by mccannon01 2 years, 4 months ago
    
    There were a lot of free blacks in the South that owned slaves of their own. See the book "Black Slave Owners" by Larry Kroger. Somehow the notion that being a slaver and/or a racist only applies to white people or Americans (especially world wide) just doesn't hold up to the real record.
    
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Posted by Ben_C 2 years, 4 months ago

My Dad grew up in Vicksburg Mississippi. His father was president of the local bank, his grandfather a local pastor in a church. From his perspective the South wished to secede from the Union due to their taxes which supported the industrial revolution. The southern agriculture industry was being used by the north and it pissed them off. My take from him is that slavery was not highly thought of by most southerners.

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  Posted by terrycan 2 years, 4 months ago
  
  Thank you for your perspective. I have spent little time in the South. Don't know many people there.
  I have never met anyone that thought slavery was a good idea.
  
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Slavery and the Industrial Revolution

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