Charles Brown wrote:
>The problem with letting the South go from the standpoint of abolitionists
>(John >Brown et al.) would be that it would have been an imperial power
>all over the Western
>Hemisphere expanding like a land vampire into Mexico, Meso-America even
>South >America. The economic nature of slavery made it rapacious in its
>need for land ( see >my other post under this thread for Marx's analysis
>of this dynamic).
This is interesting. Instead of 150 years of corrupt Latin American dictators and "democracies," propped up by and in the service of the United States, there would have been a direct land grab by the Southern gentlemen. This raises some questions: Would the South, by itself, have had the military power to do this? Could they, for instance, have even taken Mexico? Would the North have reacted against this infringement on their rights to control the affairs of the Western hemisphere? Would this have led to a war between the two sides anyway, this time over the spoils of imperialism rather than the health of the union or the morality of slavery? What would have happened to the then-unsettled US West?
This is all conjecture, and probaby meaningless, but interesting to muse on. For a few minutes anyway.
eric