Reply #120: Since we're playing "what ifs"....

[DoNotRefill]

what about the damage caused by the Civil War? I'm not talking economic damage, which was severe, or the cost in lives, which was great, but rather in terms of race relations.

If slavery had died out of natural causes within 10 or even 20 years (say by the 1880s), and the impetus for it had come from the South as an economic measure instead of being imposed at the point of a bayonet from the North, wouldn't race relations have been better now?

Think about it....If Lee had seceded Davis as president of the Confederacy, and slavery had been ended as an act of the Confederate Congress, there might have been no KKK, no Jim Crow, et cetera. The Civil War generated huge amounts of hostility which still hasn't dissipated, and which still poisons race relations to this day. There was even talk during the Confederacy of emancipating slaves if they served in the Confederate Army, so this isn't some pipe dream.

We can't say for sure what would have happened, but what actually DID happen wasn't some rosy "best case scenario" kind of result. The evils of slavery persisted after slavery was made illegal. How long was it before a white man was convicted of raping a black woman or child in the South? Another route towards destroying slavery COULD have had a better result.