Cockburn on slavery

[James Baird]

>
>The second point is, was it necessary to fight the Civil War at all?  I
>have long had a suspicion that the Civil War caused damage -- in terms
>of casualties and regional resentments that endure to this day -- that
>outweighs the benefit of ending slavery quickly (which, in itself,
>seemed an afterthought -- Lincoln appeared much more concerned with his
>fetish of preserving the union, to me a meaningless abstraction).  Even
>without the war, how long could slavery have endured without the South
>becoming a pariah state in the 19th century as South Africa did in the
>20th?  My position is a pacifist one -- I think wars bring more ills
>than solutions. 
>

I read a book last year called "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men" 
by Jeffrey Hummel.  He comes at things from a right-libertarian 
viewpoint, but his grasp of the literature is amazing.  It's his 
contention that the North should have followed the recommendations of 
abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and let the south go; that 
without the "enforcement subsidy" of the fugative slave laws, slavery 
was uneconomic and would die on its own.  

Jim Baird

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