I actually agree with the last sentence; though I'd point out it might have been less so, had the "peculiar institution" been allowed to die a natural death through gradual compensated emancipation and mechanized agriculture. The first was never allowed to happen, and the second came two decades too late. Educated Southerners at the time understood that chattel slavery was becoming a political, social and economic liability. Gen. Lee had freed his slaves years before the war; Jefferson Davis and his brother were beginning to educate their slaves, to prepare them for the responsibility of being free citizens. The problem was that so much of the South's capital was tied up in human chattel. This was not an insoluble problem for America as a whole, but with the North having little to gain for itself, the political will necessary was lacking. The 1860 election victory by what was at the time a purely sectional party was the last straw, from the Southern point of view; they saw little hope of compromise with the Radical Republicans of New England (and were probably correct in that assessment).
We will never know, alas, what might have been, had Lincoln taken Horace Greeley's advice, and let the South go. It seems likely that slavery would have died out gradually in the second half of the nineteenth century. Jim Crow, in the virulent form we knew it, would have been something far milder, had it even existed at all. Whether the two separate nations would have eventually reunited is another question; though it is not improbable that they would have at least been on friendly terms, and both sides, spared the loss of so many of their best and ablest young men on the battlefield, might have been stronger and wiser for it. The loss of life was the equivalent of ten million today. No wonder there was no end of mythmaking, to attempt to justify that kind of carnage.
I'd like to agree with you...but I can't
A graceful withdrawal from a slave economy was not an option. The south was offered and they refused. They would only abandon their peculiar institution of slavery by the point of a gun. Slaves as property was not an economic decision, it was pure racism at it's worst
After the civil war, the south was again given a chance to abandon their peculiar institution. After 100 years they still clung to their institutional racism. Once again, they would only abandon their institutional racism by force
Claiming it was pure economics was bullshit. The south officially declared blacks as subhuman and refused to even eat or sit next to them because they were officially declared dirty. The worst crime a black in the south could commit was to act as if he were as good as a white man
First, our ancestors NEVER received a good-faith offer of compensated emancipation of their slave property (and yes, slaves were still property, legally, in 1861). Jim Crow was the direct and somewhat understandable result of Radical Reconstruction. Had you Yankees been stripped of your right to vote (show me the constitutional authority for that completely unlawful act, BTW), had illiterate slaves not only placed in governance over you, controlled and handled by your enemies, and instructed by those handlers to steal from you, confiscate your property, deprive you of any semblance of due process, rape your women, humiliate you daily, and terrorize oro even murder you if you so much as spoke out gainst it, would you not hate both those former slaves, and the society which put them in that position. The carpetbagging Yankees, with few exceptions, were no idealists, mind you; they were the vilest, most vengeful scum of the Northern cities, thieves, criminals and murderers, dedicated only to fortune seeking and the establishment of permanent political hegemony over the conquered South. Ten years of terror, all under the protection of the troops of your erstwhile enemy, and you wouldn't hate them? In a pig's eye, you wouldn't! When the South finally threw out the reconstruction governments (all corrupt, and none of which could survive a day without the protection of Yankee troops, Southerners of the time had one thought; the same you would have had:This will NEVER happen again! It was an extreme reaction to an extreme provocation. The carpetbaggers and scalawags ran to the safety of the North, and the former slaves were left to take the full and justified wrath of the South. That part of it was a shame, as those most deserving of hanging or tar and feathering got clean away, but it is human nature in such a situation to substitute the target you can get your hands on for the ones you can't. The carpetbaggers were of course more than happy to see the former slaves they had seen primarily as useful fools face the hornets' nest that had been stirred up; they had their loot, and the freedmen, whom they had little real concern for, would just have to deal with the consequences.
As for the Yankee concern for civil rights, I note more than a little hypocrisy there as well; I recall Blacks receiving more hate in Chicago than in South Carolina; and when forced busing, which Yankees thought was a fine remedy for the South, came to that liberal bastion that is Boston, who did I see, throwing rocks at little Black kids getting on buses, huh? Hint: they WERE NOT Southerners! It seems most of you were less than enthusiastic about taking the same medicine you thought good for the South. In fact, there are plenty of towns, and plenty of people in the North and Midwest, where the local White population has never to this day even known any Black people, much less had even ONE living among them; more lily-white than any place in the Jim Crow South; those same Yankees know ALL about race relations, though-just ask them! The truth is, that if decent Southerners had not, of their own free will, come around to accepting their Black neighbors, you'd STILL be trying to "make" us comply. YOU didn't (and couldn't) make the klan socially unacceptable down here; decent Southerners could and did. YOU didn't, (and couldn't) make White juries convict in civil rights cases down here; we Southerners did. Believe me when I tell you that local suasion accomplished more for the cause of Black civil rights down here, than all the "force" you could bring to bear ever could or did. The Civil Rights Movement eventually succeeded here, because it won over the hearts and minds of a majority of Southern Whites, and helped them put away the results of decades of fear, misunderstanding, and lies perpetuated by politicians who had pandered to their worst instincts. I know, because it was primarily my generation of Southern Whites who worked with them to accomplish that. What's ironic, is that race relations on the whole are better in most place in the South, than elsewhere (where there is a significant Black population) We can't avoid each other down here, we have to get to know each other and work together, and interact with each other on a daily basis, in a way many of you up North do not. If you've ever read any of my posts in the Race forum, you know what my views on that are (and they are NOT what most of you stereotypically ascribe to Southerners).
