What would you have done regarding the issue of slavery?
Would you have prevented the formation (Constitution) of the United State of America?
Would you have immediately freed all slaves?
If so, what would you have done with them?
How else would you have handled this British institution?
There was no way to get the Southern states to sign on if slavery were outlawed, but I probably would not have bragged about "All men are created equal" back in 1776, knowing that we were holding humans in slavery and keeping it legal.
That's probably a good analysis.. The only thing I'd add is that GOALS don't have to mar your basic principles. If by some miracle, Libertarians started to lead this country, they'd be face with a stinky mountain of stuff that disturbs them, BUT the reality is -- you gotta WORK with your principles to move mountains and hold your nose... So at the Founding, I see nothing wrong with declaring immutable principles..
I think the issue with the South was more the larger disconnect between economies and cultures. And like any assimilation, there should have been immediate efforts to EXPAND the types of jobs and enterprises that the South could rely on. And somewhere in the 1st 2 administrations, infrastructure should have been provided to the South to MINIMIZE the large labor intensive farming..
The Civil War was aggravated by "infrastructure dollars" being spent largely in the NORTH.. And tariffs that HURT agriculture in the South..
Would not expect the "Liberal" founders to direct the economy, but I would expect them to encourage parity for economic opportunity by fairly allocating the loot from the Treasury...
How the nation could accept the Missouri compromise is beyond me.. Because by that point, cotton, sugar and rice and other labor intensive crops should not haven driven major morality flaws... By 1820, policies should have opened the South to OTHER ways of "making a living"....
I agree with most of that. But, it was basically money following the highest returns, and that was cotton, especially when the Americans stole enough technology from the Brits to start opening their own large factories for cloth making in the early 1800's, driving up demand for cotton. Geographically the 'Cotton kingdom' reached its natural limits by the 1850's with East Texas as the last viable cotton growing areas brought into production. That also caused a price collapse as well, ironically. That limit was why Webster didn't feel slavery issue was of any importance in the battles over the Wilmot Proviso or in Oregon, for that matter. Slavery was legal under the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but a census in 1860 show about a whopping 9 slaves or so there, after several years of legality. Slavery was viable in the South because of the broken terrain, which prevented the kind of mechanization going in the plains states, with mechanical reapers and all that bonanza farming, plus the seasonal weather made it impossible to farm all year round, the same reason slaves weren't economically viable in the Northeastern states.
It was also cultural.. Because the wealth was in the land holdings. Not like the Northern economies. Which created more "wealth disparity" in the South... So the aristocratic culture was the political voice. To get the "commoners" on board with Secession, the issues were much broader than slavery alone.. And that failed to work in many places, like my Tennessee. Where serious divisions CREATED our "3 star section" state flag because of the divisions over succession...
I agree that while slavery was always in the midst of the arguments, it was not slavery per se' that triggered secession and Civil War, but rather a deep seated belief that the north was smothering the south economically and the issue of whether south had the right to order their own future.
The Founding Fathers were mostly philosophically opposed to slavery on moral principles, but well understood that if the government was going to be a government of, for, and by the people, the people themselves would have to decide about slavery. They did what they could to ensure there would be no new slave states and that the slave trade from other countries ceased, but that was as far as they could go if the 13 separate colonies were to be knit together into one strong, cohesive nation capable of ordering its own destiny.
By the mid 18th Century the great hypocrisy was that the wealthy merchants and manufacturers in the north claimed to oppose slavery but were quite happy to benefit hugely from the produce of slave labor. At the beginning of the Civil War the north controlled well over 90% of almost all U.S. manufacturing and trade. With the exception of some individuals and organized factions, they didn't care all that much about the plight of the slaves and absolutely didn't want to live with them, but they wanted them safely contained in the south where they wouldn't compete with white people in the labor force.
Wilmot's Proviso, passed several times in the House but never could quite get through the Senate, would have prohibited black labor, free or slave, in the territories won in the Mexican American War. Then SCOTUS handed down the Dred Scott decision that removed all rights of citizenship from all black people, slave or free and ruled that slavery could not be banned in the territories. That infuriated the abolitionists and northern merchant class but strengthened the resolve of the South.
Even Abraham Lincoln, man of his times and culture, considered black people inferior to white people, did not think blacks and white should mingle, and entertained the thought of exporting all the black people to Liberia. In his first inaugural address:
. . . Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you.
I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that—I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:
Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes. . .
Evenso the increased pressures from the north to order the rights of the southern states, partly driven by abolitionists but mostly driven by motives to prevent competition from slave labor ,triggered the more radical in South Carolina to secede creating a domino effect that resulted in a seceded Confederacy. So Lincoln who had no intention of freeing the slaves, indeed had promised not to do so, decided the southern states had forced his hand by seceding. And even then his Emancipation Proclamation freed only the slaves in the seceding states but not those in the slave states that did not secede.
The much better financed Union Army prevailed in a long, bloody Civil War and the rest is also history.
