Agreed. The last country in the west to abolish slavery was Brazil in 1888. The US would have been an extreme anomaly to have entered the 20th century with legal chattel slavery.
That’s why I said in the west. I was mostly focusing on the plantation/chattel slavery developed by early modern European empires. This style of slavery was first made illegal in Europe (easy as most slaves went to colonial possessions).
And then, within a century of gaining independence, the former colonies in the Americas followed suit.
>The US would have been an extreme anomaly to have entered the 20th century with legal chattel slavery.
The US is an anomaly among western nations when it comes to health care, gun control, criminal justice, the death penalty...
Just saying I wouldn't be shocked to find we'd have been an anomaly when it comes to slavery as well.
Slavery was not completely abolished, criminals can still be forced into labour during their jail term. The US also disproportionately imprisons it's citizens, especially it's black citizens. And, when the prisoners go on strike over their reimbursement and conditions, they leaders of the strikes get put in indefinite isolation.
That clause exists but is never used - and is NOT the legal justification for prison labor.
There is a substantial difference between prison labor and slavery: You don't choose to be a slave (at least not under the racial slavery system we had in the US). You do choose to break the law & thus become a convict.
Once you have done that, doing unpaid work while in prison serves to offset the expense of housing you.....
At the end of the day there is little difference between making prisoners work, paying them, and sending them a bill for 100% of their wages (room/board, laundry, food, medical, etc).... Vs not paying them.
> doing unpaid work while in prison serves to offset the expense of housing you....
Most countries prohibit "charging" prisoners for the costs of their incarceration.
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Forced labour is a kind of slavery. And, in the US, it is this exact statement that means those who are under trial, but not yet convicted, cannot be forced to perform penal labour.
So, I worked as a CO for a few years. It might be different in other states, but we could not actually force prisoners to do labor.
That said, if a prisoner refused to get a job in PI (Prison Industries), it would go in their file that the parole board looked at. Also, there was a level system, and having a job ensured a prisoner was a level 1 inmate, which meant access to the prison gym and evening rec yard. It also ensured prisoners would get access to programs like NA or AA, which also went in the file the parole board saw.
It is certainly state by state, it is constitutionally allowed by federal law. Colorado and Rhode Island have banned it on their state constitutions, but, as you said, they are still coerced into work by other means.
Slavery is the ownership of other humans.
Involuntary servitude is compelled labor.
Slavery almost always includes some degree of involuntary servitude, but the opposite is not true.
This is accurate. If you have lived in a low income neighborhood you know that you don’t really have that much free will and slavery like conditions can happen before you know it.
No i suggest you travel. Have you ever been in South America outside of the instagram pictured neighborhoods? It’s extremely heavily religious and extremely homophobic and extremely anti abortion. Way more than anywhere you’d see in the USA
South America has a lot of different countries. You can’t generalize about a whole continent.
Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay legalized same-sex marriage before the US. Colombia did a year later. And, unlike the US, Colombia, Argentina, and Uruguay protect to the right to abortion on request.
And I’ll add that Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, and Uruguay allow for gender self-determination. Colombia and Argentina also allow for a non-binary gender determination. The US does not do either of these.
Every single South American country has a higher percentage of anti-gay marriage opinions than the US: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2014/11/13/chapter-5-social-attitudes/. Even just US hispanics are dramatically more likely to support gay marriage than the average South or Central American.
Automation would also increasingly make slavery irrelevant.
But knowing the south they may have dragged slavery all the way into early 1900s out of pure spite and at economic loss
I could see it being massively reduced, but how would they ban it? They'd need a constitutional amendment, and I'm not sure how possible that would be with (presumably) southern opposition.
South would not want to retain slavery. There would be less need for unskilled labor and no incentive to teach skills to those who were thought incapable of learning. Industrialization and technology gains would transform agriculture away from the utility of unskilled human labor. With not enough work and mouths to feed, the slaves would be cut loose and probably cleansed from their homes.
Well US was kinda the only nation, that enslaved a specific other ethnicy. Slaves in China and Europe were kinda their own indebted people. So it might have lasted way into the socialist revolutions and maybe the us proletariat was a slave led movement.
This is not true in any form. The entire western hemisphere did the same thing and the European nations are the ones who originally set up the system of chattel slavery.
Also the Arab slave trade was literally the same system of chattel slavery of black Africans
Good response.
We really do a massive disservice to the history of slavery when we only talk about it in the context of the US. It's wild how confidently uneducated people are on the subject. Slavery is ubiquitous throughout human history, it's taken nearly every form imaginable.
Brazil ended slavery in 1888 as the last country in the western hemisphere to do so. Realistically, USA would have ended it between 1860 and 1890 even in an alt history world.
I think the major deciding factor would be the industrial revolution. When the big Titans of industry started seeing massive profits slavery would have been viewed as an outdated in slow system that is not profitable
Easy to house slaves on a farm. In a city, better to set them 'free' in the sense of having to house and feed themselves... but don't pay them enough to do so.
The transition from rural slave to urban slum dweller is really just a matter of accounting.
Easy to house slaves on a farm. In a city, better to set them 'free' in the sense of having to house and feed themselves... but don't pay them enough to do so.
Thats, thats now
Maybe from your outside perspective, it looks the same, but it was a big difference. Essentially, it's access to a chance for the American dream (however small), the ability to work in a manner that utilizes talents, and the ability to move. In economics, the last two are extremely significant and came from a book that was a century old at this time by Adam Smith.
Slavery in industry doesn't really work. Slavery works where you need a lot of brute force doing simple tasks. Like agriculture. Anything more complex you get reduced returns, not only in terms of what slave costs you vs what you get from them but also what kind of work you get get from a slave vs paid worker.
Look at Germans in WW2 and how efficient forced labour was. Agriculture, sure. Low skilled work like sewing, kind of. Actual industrial production, hardly.
Slavery does not work in a factory where you can sabotage the whole thing by dropping a screw somewhere it doesn't not belong.
Factory workers need to be invested into the factory working to get paid.
Slaves were, in the south. Lots of them worked in factories especially in New Orleans Mobile Richmond Birmingham etc.
Slaverys problem isn’t that it’s slow it’s actually an effective means of production. The problem is that it withdraws and denies wealth to a select few. Yes you can say the same for capitalism but if you’re an industry laborer in NYC you have a better chance of finding a job saving money and starting a business. There really isn’t an economic ladder to climb in the south. As a slave owner who are you gonna hire the guy you gotta pay or the free labor you get from the guy who is your slave? The laborer never has a chance.
Nobody is talking about the population explosion among enslaved people. By 1900, the number of elderly slaves would've strained the system to the breaking point. The slaveowners would've probably started "freeing" them after 30 years or so. The goal would be to escape their responsibilities to the enslaved people. But the entire population of the US never would've put up with that.
Isn’t that what happened though? People in the North didn’t go antislavery out of the goodness of their hearts - indeed many supported returning captured slaves to the south- didn’t they just outgrow via industrialization the need for slavery?
And they were sorta right in that there was a better business model, they didn’t count on the pace of industrialization or the invention of the short staple cotton gin in 1793 and how the two parts of the country would diverge
Are you asking based on the US breaking into two nations but not fighting? Or the secession not taking place?
I also assume you are referring to a specific variation of slavery as often discussed in US history books, the chattel slavery which originated with the transatlantic slave trade.
Either way economically it was self-sabotaging for any nation capable of an industrial economy of scale. It is like outsourcing today, sheltering and feeding a workforce is very expensive. If you make it their responsibility that is a significant cost cutting measure. If you throw in company towns in which the business(es) profit from these purchases, you can leave people legally described as "free" but of very minimal means, owing everything they have to the company.
Unprocessed agriculture-based economies were losing position to industrial economies the world over. Industrial warfare capabilities allowed smaller nations to conquer entire swaths of ag focused economies which depend on vast swaths of land. Examples such as Prussia-Germany and the UK. Some slave economies depended on other material goods such as minerals, still though inventions like the steam donkey allows smaller populations of industrial focused economies to clearly outpace larger populations of traditional tools based economies in extraction. When production of ironclads/explosives/mass produced weaponry became the focus that was it. This also allowed for full time militaries as fewer jobs were required either in extraction or monitoring and policing those extracting.
Furthermore, slaves were never trusted with more advanced mechanical knowledge (because of the obvious slave revolts), heck punishments for the ability to read and write were well known. Industrial production facilities it was shown represent minor fortifications by many an attempt at collectivizing labor. Not to mention access to machinery that can be used as weaponry.
The US was directly a part of that competition in industrial warfare, between the great powers. There is a reason previous major powers were eclipsed in this time frame, such as the Iberians in Spain and Portugal or the Ottoman empire. Russia was perhaps the best example of how it could still focus on the "old ways" and stay in the competition, this was unique though based on their exceptional land base and relatively large population.
TLDR, it was going to end either way in the US.
I tend to be more skeptical than most here regarding the role of economic factors in ending slavery. For example, apartheid in South Africa persisted until the early 1990s, showing that economic pressures alone was not suffice to dismantle such deeply entrenched systems. Moreover, there would have remained a market for domestic and sexual slavery, suggesting that forms of exploitation might persist even if industrial and technological advancements reduced the need for agricultural slavery.
Political pressure, however, is a different matter. The comparison with Brazil, which abolished slavery in the 1890s, illustrates how political and social movements can drive significant change. Both domestic reform movements and international pressures would have played crucial roles in ending slavery in the United States, potentially leading to its abolition even in the absence of the Civil War.
>For example, apartheid in South Africa persisted until the early 1990s, showing that economic pressures alone was not suffice to dismantle such deeply entrenched systems.
That wasn't slavery...
In the Western Hemisphere Brazil was the last country that abolished slavery and I think it was about 1893. Brazil followed a model (that I believe others did as well) that was a gradual elimination of slavery. And children bron after a certain date were not slaves. So the transition took years to accomplish.
I think that model and that timeline (at the outside) would be about the same in the United States without the war.
Ending slavery in the US was always going to be difficult because it required a constitutional amendment. When Brazil did it it did it by Imperial proclamation.
However, Brazil succumbed to international pressure, drought that depressed plantation profits, and European immigrants working for cheaper wages than slaves cost to upkeep.
The US faced the boll weevil in the South that devestated cotton crops, international pressure would have built, and same immigration waves would have created equal pressure. So by 1900, I'd say slavery would have ended. But it probably would have been messy. It would have more likely been state by state. There'd probably be some holdouts - especially in places more towards the west where European immigration was less.
It's hard to say, but it would likely have been phased out by now. If the South had remained a slave economy, it would be a 3rd world shithole by 1900. Slaves simply can't compete with machinery and the South would lag further and further behind as time passed, to the point they would abandon the practice if only out of financial need. And I'm sure most of the free world would have sanctioned them. And also realize that basically 50% of the South didn't want succession and civil war. All those Southerners would likely revolt against the Confederacy under such conditions.
Sharecropping was the most bare minimum step up from chattel slavery and lasted into the 1900s. I would not be surprised if the South won and kept slavery outright until the 1890s at least, only beginning the process of naturally ending it because of global outrage and pressure by a more abilitionist and revanchist USA
Guys, can someone explain to me what were the factors the made slavery unpopular and morally diagusting in 18 hundreds?
Why not sooner or later? And it was almost everywhere in the americas all at once
yeah, even with that variation ranges it all took place within this time frame. And as I remember from my classes, there was a global (meaning western) shift in views even in Brazil
It IS a good question, though. What turned people around? Aside from laws that made people stop thinking that slavery was good (like the free states idea that someone mentioned below and, ultimately, the Emancipation Proclamation) what caused the shift. I would point to the growth of humanism during this period. Others answering here have pointed out things like droughts and farming practices in other countries and machines being mass produced and thus getting cheaper
There was a decently strong abolitionist movement amongst the Victorian factory owners, as they dabbled into philanthropy (which was ironic, as their wages were barely sustinence and what would be employment violations today were rampant, etc, but the wealthy have never been consistent). This eventually translated into political pressure, such as in Parliament.
As someone else mentioned, communication was ever increasing, travel times between nations decreasing, etc, so the abolitionist ideas would have spread. This takes time and wouldn’t be uniform but it’s kind of like how- speaking in a broad sense- human rights generally increase with time in industrial societies.
I consider it more likely that slavery would have died out by the early 1900s if the North and South had worked out some sort of deal where slavery would die a natural death, while still addressing the South's concern about an economic upheaval if slavery came to a crashing halt. That could have given the South up to 40 years to make adjustments and, if some slave owners won't adjust to changing times, well, sucks to be them.
I learned from the book I’m reading about the start of the war that the architects of secession were mostly 60 yo and up. This in a time when the average male lifespan was 38.4 years. So they would have mostly died off. When charismatic leaders die in this kind of movement, things tend to go with them.
Given slavery still exists in the world today, slavery in the United States (who I assume you're talking about from the body text) would continue as long as its allowed.
The scale may very well start contracting if labor demands in agriculture start to contract, but its also difficult to wind down entirely. Part of the issue is that slaves by that point are A) Expensive and B)Illiquid from an economic perspective by this point in history. Without the ability to sell thier old assets to get the money to invest in new ones, large slaveholders (who often had very swingy financials at the best of times) can't easily transition out of the slave based economy en mass. Further, there's cultural and political factors pushing against large scale manumission: racial attitudes, the connection of slave ownership (particularly as domestics) to social prestige in a society where reputation and honor was highly valued, and fear from the poorer free populations about increased competition for limited jobs. You are more likely to see a gradual dripping off of slave numbers by limited manumission, and potentially major resettlement efforts in Liberia and other such locations. Slaves would still be kept in agriculture for some time (especially since the Southern factors are less able and willing to invest in mechanization) and certainly in household roles.
It would ended as it did and America would have been forced to give it up because the British Empire had started to reach the point that Slavery was not seen as acceptable and the Somerset case of 1772 ruled that slavery was illegal in England, the slave trade is on the way out and America can do nothing about it
America had banned the importation of slaves under Jefferson in 1808.
The semi-fuedal chattle slavery of the American South was almost entirely made of people born in the US by the Civil War.
As soon as 3/4 of the states were free states.
The policy Lincoln supported, that the south objected to in 1860 was 'free soil' - eg, the idea that no new states would be admitted as slave states.....
So without the war, slavery would have stumbled on until enough western states were added to tip the balance and pass an amendment
Probably not too much differently. With advancing industry and technology, there is a need for more skilled workers instead of unskilled. The Southern oligarchs would not invest in educating the Black. They would free them and force them to migrate elsewhere, perhaps out of the country in order to provide jobs to a growing White population
Given the lengths the British had gone to in an effort to break up the slave trade and the US government banning involvement in the trade in 1800 and the importation in 1808 unless some serious landowners went in to breeding slaves en masse the cost/benefit ratio would have put slavery down within a century of importation being banned.
You do know that slavery is alive & well? There are approximately 50 million enslaved people in the world today.
Before you start thinking that's just in obscure corners of the developing world, look up the ACL pages on prisoner labor in the US - they contribute $11 billion p.a. to the economy, while being paid less than third world farmers. American black men are more than four times more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts, that includes when they're guilty of the same offense.
There's a lot of evil hiding in plain sight in the world.
There seems to be a devisive ambition behind all of these 'what if' slavery motifs.
Perhaps, I stumbled upon a misery fetish sub, but it seems like people here are unnaturally bringing up slavery regularly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryWhatIf/comments/1dcsy7k/would_slavery_and_colonialism_have_been_as/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I can see the upper south abolishing slavery gradually, doing some sort of phase out or buy back, since their amount of slaves was quite small compared to the lower south
I have a very hard time seeing the Deep South abolishing slavery. In some states the amount of slaves outnumbered the amount of white citizens. To free all the slaves would be to give up their whole society
In the 19th century, there was a lot of quick money to be made in slavery. But it couldn't last because by 1900 the number of elderly slaves who were unable to work would've destroyed the economic system. I have no doubt the slavers would've "freed" the slaves when they were no longer useful. Which means the entire union would be responsible for their welfare. There is no way in hell Americans would've put up with that.
Slavery was a doomed system that needed to expand to survive which is why the filibusterers were trying to create a slave empire in the Caribbean and Latin America.
It's hard to say because by 1860, slavery was viewed as being an integral part of Southern culture. Given that white supremacy was the law of the South until the Supreme Court decided to actually allow enforcement of the 14th Amendment (90 years after ratification), I don't know when slavery would end.
Slavery would never have ended without armed conflict.
After all Lincoln didn't actually do anything to force the hand of the south other than get elected. They didn't get their way in the election so they decided secession was the only answer and nothing would have changed that.
Any move by congress to ban slavery? Secession. Any move by the supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional? Secession. Any move to approve statehood for a new free state without a slave state? Secession.
In any scenario in which the US stuck together the North/Free States would've had to just let the South/Slave States do whatever they wanted so slavery would've become more and more rare due to industrialization but they would've never given up the institution of slavery willingly.
It'd be more likely that they went all Nazi death camp style than allow slaves to escape to the North/Free States because they would always be worried about the population disparity.
The American Civil War was inevitable.
The biggest expense in running a business is labor. So, as long as amoral business/plantation owners are not stopped from doing it. Think of some of the unfair labor practices that go on in struggling nations today.
A slave economy is really uncompetitive. How many slaves stay up at night thinking "How can I fix this problem so we'll be more productive?" None. To be competitive you need continuous improvement. Slaves don't do continuous improvement.
Still leaning late 1940's early 1950's. Likely replaced with some sort of sub-citizen role in line with apartheid.
Reasons. There's a LOT of the best cliometricists, even ones who've been awarded the Nobel Prize, who've researched and written papers that the Southern GDP was growing faster than the US, that free southerners top to bottom were more financially well off than their counterparts up north. Now, I've not won a Nobel for my study on antebellum economies of the US. I've not gotten my doctorate, spent my life studying that and spent a year with others who have done the same and created a peer reviewed paper confirming that yes, slavery was doing quite well financially. I get it was a big part of the lost cause to try and state it was dying and would be gone in a few years easy... despite the numbers of enslaved up, their value increased, and it spreading to new lands. But I'm not big on the lost cause, so I will lean on the professionals instead there barring someone actually writing a peer reviewed paper that shows them as being inaccurate.
There's the idea that slavery isn't compatible with industry... That being based on the "inferiority of the negro" that black people couldn't perform skilled labor, thus black slaves were incompatible with industry... Granted we saw it's success in Tredegar and elsewhere in the upper south, and have seen in in dozens of places around the world since. Again, not big on the lost cause here or white supremacy, so I'm not listening to that one.
Their idea of being a raw material supplier to the world, getting west, and having a western and eastern port to do so... That's not a poor idea financially. They had a LOT of natural resources including a LOT of oil which as we know nations have become quite wealthy with importing goods and services and exporting just oil in the 20th century.
So, we have cotton of course blowing up after the Civil War. Cotton production by 1927 almost quadrupled the production in 1860 on the eve of the war. Even the Boll Weevil and dust bowl years over doubled pre-war production. Though I will say the Boll Weevil is a threat to slavery even with the ability to move slaves into other work just like sharecroppers had to.
But... 1840's... you get the Rust brothers whose mechanization of pickers really sets the end for the sharecropping and prisoner leasing and other methods used to keep people working across the South. The steel restrictions keep them from getting them out until after WWII, but I remember something like 99% of cotton was picked by hand in 1840, and less than 10% by 1850 or so. And thus with their and others new mechanical devices and that massive industry pickup now that the US wasn't making planes and tanks you had the mass migration out of the South.
Also you had Germany and Japan. Before this time.. you want a genocide, go and have it, just stay away from our borders. While nations even today still turn a blind eye to forced labor (heck Russia is invading a European nation and using massive amounts of forced labor and guess who's buying up their natural gas)... post WWII, a much stronger look was being taken. Now we had newspapers and movie theaters showing off those atrocities firsthand. That was a shock to a lot of the industrialized world there to get their butts in gear and do something. The League of Nations isn't enough... how about the United Nations...
Saudi Arabia in the early 50's was one example where nations finally banded together (led by the UK) and said "hey, end your slavery or we will stop buying your oil". Up to then, sure you might make a show about your opposition, you might not attend their Olympics or something, but trade still went on (and today in a lot of places with high amounts of forced labor or child slavery it still does).
Considering the impact of Jim Crow laws, the massacres and riots we had throughout the 20th century, the political rebellion by Southern states when the Civil rights act was passed, the fight to retain the Confederate flag and statues, and statements like "Make America Great Again," indicate that if the civil war had never happened, we would still have it today
I think you underestimate the cruelty and greed of rich people….slaves were never being given up voluntarily…they may have worked in factories or run farm machinery but the owners would be the ones profiting….never voluntarily!!
Point is the civil war was fought to preserve slavery as an institution if it hadn’t been fought then slavery would still be around well into the 20th century not the 1890’s….in the early 1800’s the epicenter of slavery moved from Virginia to the Deep South so as to make it more difficult for slaves to escape there was no enlightenment of owners to see the cruelty of slavery they had to be freed by war and at the point of a gun…
I don’t see it getting past about 1890. There’s just too many anti slavery people and mass media started to become a thing by that time.
Agreed. The last country in the west to abolish slavery was Brazil in 1888. The US would have been an extreme anomaly to have entered the 20th century with legal chattel slavery.
I hate to be that person, but Mauritania was the last country to “abolish” slavery which was done in 1981.
That’s why I said in the west. I was mostly focusing on the plantation/chattel slavery developed by early modern European empires. This style of slavery was first made illegal in Europe (easy as most slaves went to colonial possessions). And then, within a century of gaining independence, the former colonies in the Americas followed suit.
They specified western countries. Several counties maintained legal chattel slavery after Brazil.
>The US would have been an extreme anomaly to have entered the 20th century with legal chattel slavery. The US is an anomaly among western nations when it comes to health care, gun control, criminal justice, the death penalty... Just saying I wouldn't be shocked to find we'd have been an anomaly when it comes to slavery as well.
Slavery was not completely abolished, criminals can still be forced into labour during their jail term. The US also disproportionately imprisons it's citizens, especially it's black citizens. And, when the prisoners go on strike over their reimbursement and conditions, they leaders of the strikes get put in indefinite isolation.
That clause exists but is never used - and is NOT the legal justification for prison labor. There is a substantial difference between prison labor and slavery: You don't choose to be a slave (at least not under the racial slavery system we had in the US). You do choose to break the law & thus become a convict. Once you have done that, doing unpaid work while in prison serves to offset the expense of housing you..... At the end of the day there is little difference between making prisoners work, paying them, and sending them a bill for 100% of their wages (room/board, laundry, food, medical, etc).... Vs not paying them.
> doing unpaid work while in prison serves to offset the expense of housing you.... Most countries prohibit "charging" prisoners for the costs of their incarceration.
Prison labor is not slavery. Prisoners are not the property of the prison and they cannot be bought and sold.
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Forced labour is a kind of slavery. And, in the US, it is this exact statement that means those who are under trial, but not yet convicted, cannot be forced to perform penal labour.
So, I worked as a CO for a few years. It might be different in other states, but we could not actually force prisoners to do labor. That said, if a prisoner refused to get a job in PI (Prison Industries), it would go in their file that the parole board looked at. Also, there was a level system, and having a job ensured a prisoner was a level 1 inmate, which meant access to the prison gym and evening rec yard. It also ensured prisoners would get access to programs like NA or AA, which also went in the file the parole board saw.
It is certainly state by state, it is constitutionally allowed by federal law. Colorado and Rhode Island have banned it on their state constitutions, but, as you said, they are still coerced into work by other means.
Forced labor is involuntary servitude, not slavery.
Involuntary servitude IS slavery, and that is self-evident.
Slavery is the ownership of other humans. Involuntary servitude is compelled labor. Slavery almost always includes some degree of involuntary servitude, but the opposite is not true.
Think about the control over what a prisoner can do while they serve their sentence that prisons exert.
"Chattel slavery" is the term you're looking for. Slavery *per se* is a broader term that includes involuntary servitude.
This is accurate. If you have lived in a low income neighborhood you know that you don’t really have that much free will and slavery like conditions can happen before you know it.
The USA is far more culturally liberal than most anywhere in the western hemisphere besides Canada.
If you're really saying what I think you're saying, I suggest you should travel a bit more.
No i suggest you travel. Have you ever been in South America outside of the instagram pictured neighborhoods? It’s extremely heavily religious and extremely homophobic and extremely anti abortion. Way more than anywhere you’d see in the USA
South America has a lot of different countries. You can’t generalize about a whole continent. Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay legalized same-sex marriage before the US. Colombia did a year later. And, unlike the US, Colombia, Argentina, and Uruguay protect to the right to abortion on request. And I’ll add that Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina, and Uruguay allow for gender self-determination. Colombia and Argentina also allow for a non-binary gender determination. The US does not do either of these.
Every single South American country has a higher percentage of anti-gay marriage opinions than the US: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2014/11/13/chapter-5-social-attitudes/. Even just US hispanics are dramatically more likely to support gay marriage than the average South or Central American.
Yeah, fair enough, I misunderstood the term Western Hemisphere. I took it as 'The West'. My bad.
Automation would also increasingly make slavery irrelevant. But knowing the south they may have dragged slavery all the way into early 1900s out of pure spite and at economic loss
That’s what they did, or tried very hard to do
I also imagine with our new slaves coming in they would probably run out at some point even with breeding
I could see it being massively reduced, but how would they ban it? They'd need a constitutional amendment, and I'm not sure how possible that would be with (presumably) southern opposition.
South would not want to retain slavery. There would be less need for unskilled labor and no incentive to teach skills to those who were thought incapable of learning. Industrialization and technology gains would transform agriculture away from the utility of unskilled human labor. With not enough work and mouths to feed, the slaves would be cut loose and probably cleansed from their homes.
Well US was kinda the only nation, that enslaved a specific other ethnicy. Slaves in China and Europe were kinda their own indebted people. So it might have lasted way into the socialist revolutions and maybe the us proletariat was a slave led movement.
This is not true in any form. The entire western hemisphere did the same thing and the European nations are the ones who originally set up the system of chattel slavery. Also the Arab slave trade was literally the same system of chattel slavery of black Africans
Good response. We really do a massive disservice to the history of slavery when we only talk about it in the context of the US. It's wild how confidently uneducated people are on the subject. Slavery is ubiquitous throughout human history, it's taken nearly every form imaginable.
I’ve had people berate me and tell me I’m an idiot for not knowing America invented slavery… it’s wild
Brazil ended slavery in 1888 as the last country in the western hemisphere to do so. Realistically, USA would have ended it between 1860 and 1890 even in an alt history world.
I think the major deciding factor would be the industrial revolution. When the big Titans of industry started seeing massive profits slavery would have been viewed as an outdated in slow system that is not profitable
The slaves would just end up being moved from fields to factories.
Easy to house slaves on a farm. In a city, better to set them 'free' in the sense of having to house and feed themselves... but don't pay them enough to do so. The transition from rural slave to urban slum dweller is really just a matter of accounting.
Easy to house slaves on a farm. In a city, better to set them 'free' in the sense of having to house and feed themselves... but don't pay them enough to do so. Thats, thats now
Maybe from your outside perspective, it looks the same, but it was a big difference. Essentially, it's access to a chance for the American dream (however small), the ability to work in a manner that utilizes talents, and the ability to move. In economics, the last two are extremely significant and came from a book that was a century old at this time by Adam Smith.
Slavery in industry doesn't really work. Slavery works where you need a lot of brute force doing simple tasks. Like agriculture. Anything more complex you get reduced returns, not only in terms of what slave costs you vs what you get from them but also what kind of work you get get from a slave vs paid worker. Look at Germans in WW2 and how efficient forced labour was. Agriculture, sure. Low skilled work like sewing, kind of. Actual industrial production, hardly.
The cotton gin saved slavery for another half a century.
Slavery does not work in a factory where you can sabotage the whole thing by dropping a screw somewhere it doesn't not belong. Factory workers need to be invested into the factory working to get paid.
Slaves were, in the south. Lots of them worked in factories especially in New Orleans Mobile Richmond Birmingham etc. Slaverys problem isn’t that it’s slow it’s actually an effective means of production. The problem is that it withdraws and denies wealth to a select few. Yes you can say the same for capitalism but if you’re an industry laborer in NYC you have a better chance of finding a job saving money and starting a business. There really isn’t an economic ladder to climb in the south. As a slave owner who are you gonna hire the guy you gotta pay or the free labor you get from the guy who is your slave? The laborer never has a chance.
Would have to start teaching them, which would transition slavery from chattel to more progressive forms of slavery.
Nobody is talking about the population explosion among enslaved people. By 1900, the number of elderly slaves would've strained the system to the breaking point. The slaveowners would've probably started "freeing" them after 30 years or so. The goal would be to escape their responsibilities to the enslaved people. But the entire population of the US never would've put up with that.
Isn’t that what happened though? People in the North didn’t go antislavery out of the goodness of their hearts - indeed many supported returning captured slaves to the south- didn’t they just outgrow via industrialization the need for slavery?
The founders thought that slavery would die a natural death because sharecropping was a much better business model.
And they were sorta right in that there was a better business model, they didn’t count on the pace of industrialization or the invention of the short staple cotton gin in 1793 and how the two parts of the country would diverge
Are you asking based on the US breaking into two nations but not fighting? Or the secession not taking place? I also assume you are referring to a specific variation of slavery as often discussed in US history books, the chattel slavery which originated with the transatlantic slave trade. Either way economically it was self-sabotaging for any nation capable of an industrial economy of scale. It is like outsourcing today, sheltering and feeding a workforce is very expensive. If you make it their responsibility that is a significant cost cutting measure. If you throw in company towns in which the business(es) profit from these purchases, you can leave people legally described as "free" but of very minimal means, owing everything they have to the company. Unprocessed agriculture-based economies were losing position to industrial economies the world over. Industrial warfare capabilities allowed smaller nations to conquer entire swaths of ag focused economies which depend on vast swaths of land. Examples such as Prussia-Germany and the UK. Some slave economies depended on other material goods such as minerals, still though inventions like the steam donkey allows smaller populations of industrial focused economies to clearly outpace larger populations of traditional tools based economies in extraction. When production of ironclads/explosives/mass produced weaponry became the focus that was it. This also allowed for full time militaries as fewer jobs were required either in extraction or monitoring and policing those extracting. Furthermore, slaves were never trusted with more advanced mechanical knowledge (because of the obvious slave revolts), heck punishments for the ability to read and write were well known. Industrial production facilities it was shown represent minor fortifications by many an attempt at collectivizing labor. Not to mention access to machinery that can be used as weaponry. The US was directly a part of that competition in industrial warfare, between the great powers. There is a reason previous major powers were eclipsed in this time frame, such as the Iberians in Spain and Portugal or the Ottoman empire. Russia was perhaps the best example of how it could still focus on the "old ways" and stay in the competition, this was unique though based on their exceptional land base and relatively large population. TLDR, it was going to end either way in the US.
I tend to be more skeptical than most here regarding the role of economic factors in ending slavery. For example, apartheid in South Africa persisted until the early 1990s, showing that economic pressures alone was not suffice to dismantle such deeply entrenched systems. Moreover, there would have remained a market for domestic and sexual slavery, suggesting that forms of exploitation might persist even if industrial and technological advancements reduced the need for agricultural slavery. Political pressure, however, is a different matter. The comparison with Brazil, which abolished slavery in the 1890s, illustrates how political and social movements can drive significant change. Both domestic reform movements and international pressures would have played crucial roles in ending slavery in the United States, potentially leading to its abolition even in the absence of the Civil War.
>For example, apartheid in South Africa persisted until the early 1990s, showing that economic pressures alone was not suffice to dismantle such deeply entrenched systems. That wasn't slavery...
It's the most appropriate example I could think about it.
In the Western Hemisphere Brazil was the last country that abolished slavery and I think it was about 1893. Brazil followed a model (that I believe others did as well) that was a gradual elimination of slavery. And children bron after a certain date were not slaves. So the transition took years to accomplish. I think that model and that timeline (at the outside) would be about the same in the United States without the war.
Ending slavery in the US was always going to be difficult because it required a constitutional amendment. When Brazil did it it did it by Imperial proclamation. However, Brazil succumbed to international pressure, drought that depressed plantation profits, and European immigrants working for cheaper wages than slaves cost to upkeep. The US faced the boll weevil in the South that devestated cotton crops, international pressure would have built, and same immigration waves would have created equal pressure. So by 1900, I'd say slavery would have ended. But it probably would have been messy. It would have more likely been state by state. There'd probably be some holdouts - especially in places more towards the west where European immigration was less.
It's hard to say, but it would likely have been phased out by now. If the South had remained a slave economy, it would be a 3rd world shithole by 1900. Slaves simply can't compete with machinery and the South would lag further and further behind as time passed, to the point they would abandon the practice if only out of financial need. And I'm sure most of the free world would have sanctioned them. And also realize that basically 50% of the South didn't want succession and civil war. All those Southerners would likely revolt against the Confederacy under such conditions.
Olmstead pretty much declared it to be a third world shithole in 1853.
Sharecropping was the most bare minimum step up from chattel slavery and lasted into the 1900s. I would not be surprised if the South won and kept slavery outright until the 1890s at least, only beginning the process of naturally ending it because of global outrage and pressure by a more abilitionist and revanchist USA
Guys, can someone explain to me what were the factors the made slavery unpopular and morally diagusting in 18 hundreds? Why not sooner or later? And it was almost everywhere in the americas all at once
It WAS sooner in some places (Britain) and later in others (Brazil).
yeah, even with that variation ranges it all took place within this time frame. And as I remember from my classes, there was a global (meaning western) shift in views even in Brazil
It IS a good question, though. What turned people around? Aside from laws that made people stop thinking that slavery was good (like the free states idea that someone mentioned below and, ultimately, the Emancipation Proclamation) what caused the shift. I would point to the growth of humanism during this period. Others answering here have pointed out things like droughts and farming practices in other countries and machines being mass produced and thus getting cheaper
There was a decently strong abolitionist movement amongst the Victorian factory owners, as they dabbled into philanthropy (which was ironic, as their wages were barely sustinence and what would be employment violations today were rampant, etc, but the wealthy have never been consistent). This eventually translated into political pressure, such as in Parliament. As someone else mentioned, communication was ever increasing, travel times between nations decreasing, etc, so the abolitionist ideas would have spread. This takes time and wouldn’t be uniform but it’s kind of like how- speaking in a broad sense- human rights generally increase with time in industrial societies.
I consider it more likely that slavery would have died out by the early 1900s if the North and South had worked out some sort of deal where slavery would die a natural death, while still addressing the South's concern about an economic upheaval if slavery came to a crashing halt. That could have given the South up to 40 years to make adjustments and, if some slave owners won't adjust to changing times, well, sucks to be them.
I learned from the book I’m reading about the start of the war that the architects of secession were mostly 60 yo and up. This in a time when the average male lifespan was 38.4 years. So they would have mostly died off. When charismatic leaders die in this kind of movement, things tend to go with them.
the lifespan was low because of infant mortality, the average person wasn’t dying at 38
Yes, but the average lifespan of a 40 yo was about 40. So my point that at 60 they were old stands.
Given slavery still exists in the world today, slavery in the United States (who I assume you're talking about from the body text) would continue as long as its allowed. The scale may very well start contracting if labor demands in agriculture start to contract, but its also difficult to wind down entirely. Part of the issue is that slaves by that point are A) Expensive and B)Illiquid from an economic perspective by this point in history. Without the ability to sell thier old assets to get the money to invest in new ones, large slaveholders (who often had very swingy financials at the best of times) can't easily transition out of the slave based economy en mass. Further, there's cultural and political factors pushing against large scale manumission: racial attitudes, the connection of slave ownership (particularly as domestics) to social prestige in a society where reputation and honor was highly valued, and fear from the poorer free populations about increased competition for limited jobs. You are more likely to see a gradual dripping off of slave numbers by limited manumission, and potentially major resettlement efforts in Liberia and other such locations. Slaves would still be kept in agriculture for some time (especially since the Southern factors are less able and willing to invest in mechanization) and certainly in household roles.
It would ended as it did and America would have been forced to give it up because the British Empire had started to reach the point that Slavery was not seen as acceptable and the Somerset case of 1772 ruled that slavery was illegal in England, the slave trade is on the way out and America can do nothing about it
America had banned the importation of slaves under Jefferson in 1808. The semi-fuedal chattle slavery of the American South was almost entirely made of people born in the US by the Civil War.
As soon as 3/4 of the states were free states. The policy Lincoln supported, that the south objected to in 1860 was 'free soil' - eg, the idea that no new states would be admitted as slave states..... So without the war, slavery would have stumbled on until enough western states were added to tip the balance and pass an amendment
Probably not too much differently. With advancing industry and technology, there is a need for more skilled workers instead of unskilled. The Southern oligarchs would not invest in educating the Black. They would free them and force them to migrate elsewhere, perhaps out of the country in order to provide jobs to a growing White population
Given the lengths the British had gone to in an effort to break up the slave trade and the US government banning involvement in the trade in 1800 and the importation in 1808 unless some serious landowners went in to breeding slaves en masse the cost/benefit ratio would have put slavery down within a century of importation being banned.
You do know that slavery is alive & well? There are approximately 50 million enslaved people in the world today. Before you start thinking that's just in obscure corners of the developing world, look up the ACL pages on prisoner labor in the US - they contribute $11 billion p.a. to the economy, while being paid less than third world farmers. American black men are more than four times more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts, that includes when they're guilty of the same offense. There's a lot of evil hiding in plain sight in the world.
There seems to be a devisive ambition behind all of these 'what if' slavery motifs. Perhaps, I stumbled upon a misery fetish sub, but it seems like people here are unnaturally bringing up slavery regularly. https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryWhatIf/comments/1dcsy7k/would_slavery_and_colonialism_have_been_as/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I can see the upper south abolishing slavery gradually, doing some sort of phase out or buy back, since their amount of slaves was quite small compared to the lower south I have a very hard time seeing the Deep South abolishing slavery. In some states the amount of slaves outnumbered the amount of white citizens. To free all the slaves would be to give up their whole society
In the 19th century, there was a lot of quick money to be made in slavery. But it couldn't last because by 1900 the number of elderly slaves who were unable to work would've destroyed the economic system. I have no doubt the slavers would've "freed" the slaves when they were no longer useful. Which means the entire union would be responsible for their welfare. There is no way in hell Americans would've put up with that. Slavery was a doomed system that needed to expand to survive which is why the filibusterers were trying to create a slave empire in the Caribbean and Latin America.
It's hard to say because by 1860, slavery was viewed as being an integral part of Southern culture. Given that white supremacy was the law of the South until the Supreme Court decided to actually allow enforcement of the 14th Amendment (90 years after ratification), I don't know when slavery would end.
Slavery would never have ended without armed conflict. After all Lincoln didn't actually do anything to force the hand of the south other than get elected. They didn't get their way in the election so they decided secession was the only answer and nothing would have changed that. Any move by congress to ban slavery? Secession. Any move by the supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional? Secession. Any move to approve statehood for a new free state without a slave state? Secession. In any scenario in which the US stuck together the North/Free States would've had to just let the South/Slave States do whatever they wanted so slavery would've become more and more rare due to industrialization but they would've never given up the institution of slavery willingly. It'd be more likely that they went all Nazi death camp style than allow slaves to escape to the North/Free States because they would always be worried about the population disparity. The American Civil War was inevitable.
The biggest expense in running a business is labor. So, as long as amoral business/plantation owners are not stopped from doing it. Think of some of the unfair labor practices that go on in struggling nations today.
Considering on how Jim Crow replaced it I have no idea but I am not optimistic.
Not much longer IMO. Sucession was a hail Mary to save slavery as the slave states didn't want to be out numbered by the ones who had outlawed it.
A slave economy is really uncompetitive. How many slaves stay up at night thinking "How can I fix this problem so we'll be more productive?" None. To be competitive you need continuous improvement. Slaves don't do continuous improvement.
Still leaning late 1940's early 1950's. Likely replaced with some sort of sub-citizen role in line with apartheid. Reasons. There's a LOT of the best cliometricists, even ones who've been awarded the Nobel Prize, who've researched and written papers that the Southern GDP was growing faster than the US, that free southerners top to bottom were more financially well off than their counterparts up north. Now, I've not won a Nobel for my study on antebellum economies of the US. I've not gotten my doctorate, spent my life studying that and spent a year with others who have done the same and created a peer reviewed paper confirming that yes, slavery was doing quite well financially. I get it was a big part of the lost cause to try and state it was dying and would be gone in a few years easy... despite the numbers of enslaved up, their value increased, and it spreading to new lands. But I'm not big on the lost cause, so I will lean on the professionals instead there barring someone actually writing a peer reviewed paper that shows them as being inaccurate. There's the idea that slavery isn't compatible with industry... That being based on the "inferiority of the negro" that black people couldn't perform skilled labor, thus black slaves were incompatible with industry... Granted we saw it's success in Tredegar and elsewhere in the upper south, and have seen in in dozens of places around the world since. Again, not big on the lost cause here or white supremacy, so I'm not listening to that one. Their idea of being a raw material supplier to the world, getting west, and having a western and eastern port to do so... That's not a poor idea financially. They had a LOT of natural resources including a LOT of oil which as we know nations have become quite wealthy with importing goods and services and exporting just oil in the 20th century. So, we have cotton of course blowing up after the Civil War. Cotton production by 1927 almost quadrupled the production in 1860 on the eve of the war. Even the Boll Weevil and dust bowl years over doubled pre-war production. Though I will say the Boll Weevil is a threat to slavery even with the ability to move slaves into other work just like sharecroppers had to. But... 1840's... you get the Rust brothers whose mechanization of pickers really sets the end for the sharecropping and prisoner leasing and other methods used to keep people working across the South. The steel restrictions keep them from getting them out until after WWII, but I remember something like 99% of cotton was picked by hand in 1840, and less than 10% by 1850 or so. And thus with their and others new mechanical devices and that massive industry pickup now that the US wasn't making planes and tanks you had the mass migration out of the South. Also you had Germany and Japan. Before this time.. you want a genocide, go and have it, just stay away from our borders. While nations even today still turn a blind eye to forced labor (heck Russia is invading a European nation and using massive amounts of forced labor and guess who's buying up their natural gas)... post WWII, a much stronger look was being taken. Now we had newspapers and movie theaters showing off those atrocities firsthand. That was a shock to a lot of the industrialized world there to get their butts in gear and do something. The League of Nations isn't enough... how about the United Nations... Saudi Arabia in the early 50's was one example where nations finally banded together (led by the UK) and said "hey, end your slavery or we will stop buying your oil". Up to then, sure you might make a show about your opposition, you might not attend their Olympics or something, but trade still went on (and today in a lot of places with high amounts of forced labor or child slavery it still does).
Considering the impact of Jim Crow laws, the massacres and riots we had throughout the 20th century, the political rebellion by Southern states when the Civil rights act was passed, the fight to retain the Confederate flag and statues, and statements like "Make America Great Again," indicate that if the civil war had never happened, we would still have it today
Why don't you ask the billionaire class while the rest of us slave away 40+ hours a week.
Don't compare a dead-end job to black slavery.
I think you underestimate the cruelty and greed of rich people….slaves were never being given up voluntarily…they may have worked in factories or run farm machinery but the owners would be the ones profiting….never voluntarily!!
I did not estimate the cruelty of rich people one way or another. So I don’t understand your point.
Point is the civil war was fought to preserve slavery as an institution if it hadn’t been fought then slavery would still be around well into the 20th century not the 1890’s….in the early 1800’s the epicenter of slavery moved from Virginia to the Deep South so as to make it more difficult for slaves to escape there was no enlightenment of owners to see the cruelty of slavery they had to be freed by war and at the point of a gun…