Emancipation of the slaves in the USA is one of the greatest things that ever happened, but...?

Question

1. Were there any negative side-effects?
2. If there were negative side-effects, what were they?
3. What do you think could have been a good alternative?

PS: This is a serious topic, so please no jokers and clowns!

Answer 1

The obvious negative side-effect was that slaves had no homes, no money, no education mostly, and no job skills. There was a displacement of millions of people and because they had no where to go and no way to make a living, they had to go back to sharecropping, which wasn't too much better than slavery. not sure what would have been a better way to do it though.

Answer 2

Well, the South's economy suffered greatly. Plus you had many newly-freed slaves with nowhere to live or work and no way to feed their families. Then Reconstruction was a joke, basically.

But these are pittance compared to the tragedy that was "the peculiar institution".

Freedom is always the better option.

Answer 3

There are down sides to everything. One of the downsides to the end of slavery was that there were now hordes of unemployed blacks, who had no savings, no assets, no education and no land.

What they did have, however, were agricultural skills. It might have been a good idea to open up the West to them, and grant them land there. Of course, it would have had to be taken away from the Indians...

Answer 4

The obvious one was the tremendous loss of the Civil War. To this day that war saw the most American casualties of any conflict in history and was a tremendous hit to our economy. But so what? There should never be any compromise in the pursuit of liberty.