On Tue, 15 Sep 2015 06:42:36 -0400, Keyser Söze
wrote:

On 9/15/15 1:59 AM, wrote:
On Mon, 14 Sep 2015 18:35:33 -0400, Keyser Söze
wrote:



Do you think that a war that killed 3/4 million people and destroyed
the economy of the part of the country where all of the slaves resided
was good for the slaves?
This was a 19th century Iraq. The north invades, broke virtually
everything and then just left. Those freed slaves were abandoned in a
devastates landscape and most ended up going back to the same
plantations they used to work at, begging for a job.Their pay pretty
much covered their living expenses but not always.
Life did not really change much for them for almost 100 years.

You think that was the best solution?

I still have to ask "what if" and wonder if a program of economic
sanctions and boycotts of slave grown cotton would not have been more
effective.
I still think war is always the last choice, not the first choice but
that was the only option that was offered.


You seem to forget that the South started the civil war by seceding, by
grabbing Union facilities and forts, and by firing the first shots.


So what? Was secession that big a deal? Isn't it likely that they
could have formed a partnership with the north and ended up stronger
than they were?
If the confederacy had seceeded it is very likely that they would have
annexed a large part of Mexico, if not all of it and when they
partnered up again with the north, the US would have had most of North
America. Hell we might not have had to steal Panama from the
Colombians. We might have already had it.

Was the civil war good for the slaves? Well, it got them freed. Perhaps
if only we waited another...what? Another 100 years for them to be
emancipated? And I'm sure that if the colonists of the 1770s had only
waited another 100 years, Queen Victoria would have set them free, and I
forgot, how long did it take for the Brits to set India free after the
English traders took over commerce and made virtual slaves of the
ordinary citizens? About 130 years, eh?

I have said before, slavery was likely to have fallen from it's own
weight, particularly if the rest of the world forced it with economic
pressures. If the black people had been allowed to advance without
having the stigma of a war behind them, we are very likely to have had
a better result.
It might be noted that after the war, the north resented their
northern emigration and set the seeds for the northern brand of racism
that still exists today. The last I heard the most racist city in the
US was Indianapolis. The most segregated cities in the US are in
northern states. Income inequality is a blue state thing, San
Francisco being the worst..




One of the problems with reconstruction after the civil war was that
there was still a white power structure and white ownership of virtually
everything. That kept the newly freed blacks impoverished, and the
impact of that is still being felt today.

North and south.