Do you feel the Civil War was necessary to end slavery?

Question

Defend your response.

Answer 1

No, it was not necessary. It sped up the end of it in the USA, but it would have ended eventually.

Why do I say this? My parents came to the USA from a non-Christian country. There are slaves there. But look at all countries where a majority of the citizens are Christian in the Northern Hemisphere. Do any of them have slavery? No.

Does that guarantee it would have ended? No. And this is not to say non-Christian religions are slave holders. It is just the religion of my parent's country condones it. And try as the South did to allow that the Bible condoned it, Christians had long begun to realize that slavery was not in keeping with their religious precepts.

This is not to say if the South had won the war or if the war hadn't happened and slavery was still legal that blacks would have been equals. 140 years after the war there is still work to do here in my parents' adopted country.

But to summarize, everywhere else in nations controlled by Christian majorities, slavery was stopped. There is no reason to believe the South wouldn't have followed.

Answer 2

No, Although the united states were not the last country to use slaves it was a practice that was becoming obsolete in the world. The slave traders were being attacked by the british navy. So new slaves had to be bred domesticly
If the U.S. had allowed the south to secede slavery still would have ended because the rest of the world especially the countries who bought their cotton would not stand for it, and money is always the bottom line.
Lincoln was more concerned with keeping the country whole than the plight of the slaves, I read that he actually wanted to deport all of the slaves instead of integrating them into society here, but during the war he wrote the emancipation proclomation as a political manuever so although the civil war was not needed to end slavery it was needed to make the country what it is today.

Answer 3

The Civil War was in no way related to Slavery until Lincoln realized he had no chance to win it. He was losing popularity, people were rioting, he already had a terribly unpopular draft going on for an unpopular war and was floundering in office. He made it about slavery as a political ploy.

Moreover, slavery was doomed to end shortly anyway. The UK had been buying lots of cotton from the south, this made the south think that the UK would intervene on their side in the war. However, the UK was buying cotton due to the low price more than a need for it, so they had tons in warehouses. Without the huge demand of cotton from the UK, slavery was no longer economically viable. The UK was soon to hit problems of her own and would have stopped buying surplus cotton no matter what, thus starting the end of slavery.

Honestly, the Civil War is one of the biggest reasons anti-black racism was such a problem for so long. Countries that peacefully ended slavery and didnt force it to be a rallying call for a war almost always end up with more integrated and accepting populations. By forcing something on people instead of letting it end on its own, people get defensive and do whatever they can to protect their way of life.

Answer 4

No, regardless of the incontrovertible fact that it relatively hastened the top of slavery. With the introduction of the commercial revolution, increasing mechanization of agriculture, and the huge tidal wave of immigration coming in to america, the organization of slavery replaced into finally doomed. All of those factors might, in time, come jointly to thoroughly do away with the financial benefit of protecting slaves. regardless of the incontrovertible fact that, and it is a vital element, that element could have been numerous years away. Time moved slowly interior the South, and alter replaced into no longer consistently regarded upon as a good journey. on an analogous time because it relatively is impossible to grant any valid estimate as to how long slavery might have persisted, it relatively is not unreasonable to assume that the organization could have persisted into the twentieth Century had the subject no longer been forced via the Civil conflict and the activities maximum proper as much because it.

Answer 5

As much as I'm against any type of fighting, I would say yes. Slavery was something that, if outlawed and only marginally enforced, would have continued. Would the numbers have gone down? Yes, but it wouldn't have been totally eliminated. When people saw that the government was serious enough about antislavery to fight in a war, they knew they could not win.

Answer 6

It didn't end slavery it only ended it in the US.

Answer 7

The Civil War didn't end slavery. They just started calling it indentured servitude.

Answer 8

Actually, it was not about ending slavery......It was about saving the Union. It did not become about slavery until the Emancipation Proclamation.....which by the way did NOT end slavery in the North..Did ya know that? Must not have been about slavery

Answer 9

I'm afraid so.

Hypotheticals are impossible to be sure about. But there is NO clear evidence that slavery was "on its way out" in the SOUTH, as some seem to claim. I'll look at this below.

Even more disconnected from history is the claim (popular in parts of the South, I'm afraid) that the war "was not in any way (or perhaps just peripherally) about slavery." That's basically what Confederate leaders like Davis wrote AFTER the war -- but if you look at their writings, speeches and actions from the mid-1850s (if not earlier) till early in the war, esp. their statements during the 1860 Presidential contest, the reasons several states gave in their formal documents of secession, and the arguments of emissaries the first states to secede sent to convince other states to follow them, CENTRAL to these were protecting their "peculiar institution" and related way of life from the destruction they were certain Lincoln and his party meant to visit on it.

This itself helps underline who NOT 'on the way out' the institution was. Consider also the plans the South wished to carry out to "filibuster" --that is, invade countries to their South, to gain NEW lands to be worked by slaves... and so to perpetuate the economic system they believed was far superior to that of the North. Central to the argument of many was the idea -- first clearly articulated by John C Calhoun in the 1830s, that slavery was a positive GOOD [breaking with the view of Jefferson and other Southern founders who were looking for a way it might END].

So, on PRINCIPLE they had no intention of ending it. Methods like filibustering would allow them to expand and prolong it. As for where the slaves would come from -- it's odd someone even raised this point -- importation of slaves had been illegal since 1807 [though a number had violated this law], but the slave population grew rapidly by NATURAL means... so no slave trade would have been needed. (It's also possible, if the need were felt, the Confederacy would have moved to re-open the trade. A minority fought for this when their Constitution was being considered.)

Another mistake is the notion that Europe would have pressured the South to end the practice. No evidence of that, and even some contrary evidence. Several times Britain and France managed to overcome their scruples and were on the verge of RECOGNIZING the Confederacy -- and it was NOT the existence of slavery that caused them to hesitate. It is difficult to see then, how they would have 'pressured' the South the abandon the institution... as they had not done at all in the decades leading up to the war. (That's not to say that many in Britain, for example, disliked slavery and WISHED for its end, but economic interest and the "its' not our business" thinking would likely have prevented serious pressure.)

By the way, in all this, I am assuming you mean that the Southern states DID secede (and its hard to see that NOT happening in light of their extreme fears of the "abolitionist party"), but that war was avoided and they were allowed to go their own way.

So, would slavery have EVENTUALLY ended? It's possible to see ways that could happen, but hardly any guarantees. (Some who argue this way make assumptions that much else we know today would have been the same even without the Civil War. But how do we know that?) My gut says it would have ended "in time"... but it might have been a very LONG time. Industrial changes in the North would have eventually have spread to the South (though more slowly than they did) and undercut some of the basis for the system, just as they affected the 'family farm' elsewhere. But HOW long? And what would expansion into Central America have meant for all this? Or how would the division into TWO nations have changed the emergence of American (US) power around the turn of the 20th century...?

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One other viewpoint -- consider how Lincoln's Second Inaugural reflected on some of these issues. He suggested that perhaps the war was "necessary" as God's justice in judging the shared sin of slavery and destroying it. (IOW, he suggests that the War in a sense 'had to come' for slavery to finally be dealt with.) He does so humbly, and acknowledging the mystery. But I find his words hard to escape.

Answer 10

Yes And our family is still waiting for Black People to acknowledge and thank us for loosing family in the War.