Slavery and the Industrial Revolution

Posted by terrycan 3 years ago to Philosophy
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What if the Civil War never happened?
America continued as had. A country of free and slave states. The Industrial Revolution was just beginning.
With increased automation and increased specialized skills would slavery flourish or become impractical?
Would factories and investors own a workforce? Or would slavery die in the new economy?
Let me be clear. I do not support slavery.


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  • Posted by mccannon01 3 years ago
    Gen. James Longstreet said if the Confederacy had won the war, slavery would be gone by 1900 because it was a dying institution.

    OK, I read that little nugget a long time ago and just did a search for it and came up empty although there was plenty of evidence Longstreet was not favorable to slavery.
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    • Posted by 3 years ago
      Interesting. Only an elite minority were slave owners. Many whites lived in poverty in the South.
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      • Posted by mccannon01 3 years ago
        There were a lot of free blacks in the South that owned slaves of their own. See the book "Black Slave Owners" by Larry Kroger. Somehow the notion that being a slaver and/or a racist only applies to white people or Americans (especially world wide) just doesn't hold up to the real record.
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  • Posted by Ben_C 3 years ago
    My Dad grew up in Vicksburg Mississippi. His father was president of the local bank, his grandfather a local pastor in a church. From his perspective the South wished to secede from the Union due to their taxes which supported the industrial revolution. The southern agriculture industry was being used by the north and it pissed them off. My take from him is that slavery was not highly thought of by most southerners.
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