re: #228 Decatur Deb

It’s hard to imagine slavery persisting another generation in the face of technology and developing humanism throughout the “first” world—America would have been a pariah nation.

Assumes a change of heart in a people who fought a war to *keep* slavery. How is a generation going to make them give up what they were willing to kill to keep? What was going to change in the economic composition of the South to not make them reliant on a cheap labor force?

It was replaced first by attempts at quasi-slavery, tying former slaves to the same end of hoe, enforced by both violence and the new economic whip. With mobility, a flow of skilled freemen left the South for the North and West, making it’s repair, growth and industrialization even slower.

Uh, sure. The problem is that the US was willing to prioritize the growth and repair of the south over the humanity of non-whites. We’re talking about making people feel the consquences of their action, and saying it would have been harder for the South to recover from the Civil War if we didn’t turn a blind eye to them lynching folks for another 80 years isn’t a great argument.

An influx of educators and investment did occur, and that would also have been slowed if terror and military counter-terror had increased lawlessness in the occupied states. We are still seeing deep resentment of the North, often cloaked as the rural/urban split. Taking Thaddeus Steven’s approach would have made it bloodier, longer, and the South would persist as a Northern colony. Some around here think it is.

We’re still seeing deep resentment of the North because of the Lost Cause bullshit (aka they’re delusional), because we didn’t put the former Confederacy’s nose into the dirt until they were willing to TREAT EVERYONE AS A HUMAN BEING. JFC, the United States has been behind the power curve on EVERY moral decision since its inception. Every. Single. One. Blacks, Women, LGBTQ, Guns. You name it, we excused it until 20 years past the point of insanity.