> Jeffrey: . . . and not by the justice of their cause, in case anyone
> wondered about
> that . . . .
>
> [WS:] I am not sure about that. Abolition of slavery (a good thing) was
> an
> indisputable outcome of the Civil War, but another outcome was that the
> Southern social relations and politics (a bad thing) spilled over and
> eventually dominated the whole Union.
>
> So I guess the right question to ask is that of an "alternative history"
> i.e. what would have happened had the South been allowed to secede? Would
> the slavery be abolished, and if so when and in what circumstances? Would
> the North follow a different trajectory, and if so how different (along the
> lines of Canada, the UK or perhaps other European states?)
>
> Obviously, it is impossible to give empirically supported answers to these
> questions, but that is what makes this 'alternative history" approach
> intellectually interesting. One set of possible answers (yes to both
> questions) would indicate that the Civil War was not such a good thing as
> it
> might appear by looking at its outcomes alone.
>
>
This is something like the argument a good friend of mine often makes about
the civil war -- that Lincoln was a tyrannical dictator (draft, suspension
of habeas corpus, etc., nothing unconstitutional or illegal or immoral about
secession, etc.), and that the end result was that the rest of the union is
now saddled with the sort of stuff you're talking about. He'd like nothing
more than to find a way to ditch the states of the old confederacy right
now.
I have to admit, though, that I am closer to Doug's position than to the position you articulate here or to Perry Anderson's (and I actually like him, but the position seems awfully disingenuous to me). And in fact what Carrol just posted might arguably have done the deed, but do de-nazification or de-baath-ification or any of those things ever work? Or I guess, what does it mean for them to work. Maybe I'm really just a squishy liberal, but I have trouble with the idea that it would be better to let them (the seceding states) take their ball and go home, and then we, as it were, wash our hands of these things.
j