4 – Slavery Would Have Died Out
At one time, there was an argument that the Civil War was mainly about taxes and states’ rights. In reality, slavery was the primary issue for the South and the loathsome practice would have certainly continued in the event of a Confederate victory. It should be noted that slavery may not have been the main reason the North went to war. In 1862, Lincoln wrote a letter to Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune which stated:
“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that…”
To be fair to the Great Emancipator, he was personally against the notion of slavery, but his main concern was ensuring the country remained united. By the end of 1862, it was apparent that ending slavery in the rebelling states would help the North in the war, so the Emancipation Proclamation was created the following year.
There is a suggestion that slavery was almost finished by the time of the Civil War, but that is not strictly true. In 1860, almost 75% of all U.S. exports were produced by the South. The institution of slavery was said to be more valuable than all of the railroads and manufacturing companies in America at that time. There is simply no way that the South would have given up such a lucrative practice soon after the war.
The Confederacy’s hand may eventually have been forced, however. Firstly, the idea that slavery was wrong had taken hold in most civilized nations around the world. It had already been abolished in 1833 in Great Britain which began actively hunting down slave ships. During the 19th century, Portugal transported a large percentage of the slaves that were brought across the Atlantic, yet it stopped its importation of slaves in 1867. In 1888, Brazil was the last nation in the Western world to abolish slavery.
Despite the inevitable international pressure, potentially favorable economic issues in the aftermath of the Civil War would have probably kept slavery alive for a few decades. The South would have been dealt a blow by the emergence of India and Egypt as cotton producers. It would either have had to lower its cotton prices significantly or weathered the storm until the textiles boom of the 1880s gave it a boost.
By the time of World War I, however, cotton prices would once again have plummeted. It is extremely unlikely that the South could have made the massive shift to rice, coffee and other plantation-based crops that would be necessary to keep it in sound financial stead. The most likely scenario is that the South would ultimately become destitute by the 1920s and the next logical step would be to abolish slavery and find a new way to grow the economy.