editec
Mr. Forgot-it-All
- Jun 5, 2008
- 41,421
- 5,672
If secession were successful then introduction of crop harvesting machinery after the civil war surely would have made the incentive for slavery moot because business, north and south, would have embraced it as more productive thus more profitable.
Speculation, but probably true. The value of slaves would have plummeted like a stone. Not entirely sure that that alone would have ended it, but eventually the cost of owning slaves might have made an end to the vile practive.
That should mean that the slave trade from Africa would dry up and those slaves residing in the south would begin to pass from the scene without substantial reproduction being permitted.
"pass from the scene"? What does that mean? They'd have killed them? Set them free to starve or what?
A separate South would soon become more industrialized as it eventually did in the middle part of the twentieth century assuming an amicable relationship between the Union and the Confederacy. What slaves remained would be largely confined to domestic work or other labor intensive projects.
The black population in the non-slave states would continue to expand somewhat as second class citizens and likely migrate to the west and joined by runaway slaves from the new machine based Confederacy. The slave owners would be glad to see them go as their upkeep expense is not longer necessary. Older slaves would serve as domestics and be replaced by the vacuum cleaner and other "labor saving" devices.
What a different world we would live in if John Deere had come on the scene sooner.
Yeah, who can really say what might have happened?
Interesting to speculate, but really, nobody can know what might have happened.