150 Years of Misunderstanding the Civil War - Tony Horwitz - the Atlantic
Nor is there much credible evidence that the South’s “peculiar institution” would have peacefully waned on its own. Slave-grown cotton was booming in 1860, and slaves in non-cotton states like Virginia were being sold to Deep South planters at record prices, or put to work on railroads and in factories. “Slavery was a virus that could attach itself to other forms,” says historian Edward Ayers, president of the University of Richmond. “It was stronger than it had ever been and was growing stronger.”
Most historians believe that without the Civil War, slavery would have endured for decades, possibly generations. Though emancipation was a byproduct of the war, not its aim, and white Americans clearly failed during Reconstruction to protect and guarantee the rights of freed slaves, the post-war amendments enshrined the promise of full citizenship and equality in the Constitution for later generations to fulfill.
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