Quote:
Originally Posted by cmac2012
Ok, Ok. I'm not suggesting that even white southerners hang their heads in shame for the next 200 years. And as a Chinese person, yes, it's a tad different. But the economy of the south was built on the backs of slaves and the war didn't destroy all of it.
And the lucrative triangle of trade from the late 16th to early 19th centuries had a good bit to do with getting the American economy off the ground: slaves from Africa to the West Indies; sugar, molasses, and rum to the American colonies, the same to Europe along with tobacco and hemp from Virginia; copper, cloth, beads, guns and ammo to Africa to trade for slaves and repeat.
So on some level, at the end of the civil war it really wasn't enough to say 'we're sorry, here's your freedom, now get the hell off'n a my land.'
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Most people believe the War Between the States was fundamentally about slavery, Somewhere around 700k-800k soldiers died in that war, more than half were on the federal side. It cost taxpayers on both sides a fair penny, impoverishing the losers and putting the winners into a terrible economic depression.
White people did not invent slavery, nor did arabs, Romans, or whomever. Slavery was an acceptable estate of man since time recorded history. It was normal, not an aberration.
As industrialized agriculture replaced traditional methods countries generally emancipated or manumitted slaves. I could be wrong, but I think that the United States was the only country in the 19th century that fought a war over it rather than let industrialization destroy it.