sixxswine said:
Grant would have not been President of the United States. It would have been very different...
Indeed it would.
But what if they was no war after the south receded from the Union?
The southern and the northern American states would have been competing for productive citizens. If the north would have
introduced excessive legislation or taxes that people did not agree with, they could have "voted with their feet" and go south. The south would be sure to welcome these people because they would be new citizens to tax, although not as much as the north did. They only way for the north to get they people back would be to lower their taxes.
This is what historically happened in Europe in de middle ages until the legislation in the middle of the 20th century made it almost impossible to do.
Keep in mind also that this is what the founding fathers [hereafter FF] had in mind.
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-...tif=00218.TIF&cite=&coll=moa&frames=1&view=50
They thought that this would protect citizens against arbitrary government
power which the FF thought to be very dangerous [and perhaps they were right
].
In a way this is still going on in the states. Some states have legislation that permits gambling. In some states gay marriage is allowed.
I hope you all can see what danger lies in "Unification" of legislation across a continent.
That is what is going on now within the European union. The EU is now harassing the so called "European tax havens" to "harmonize" their tax laws.
Well, what about slavery I hear you say? Well, Slavery was being
abolished all over the western world in that same period. It was on it's way out! The UK was the first. They abolished slavery in 1815 and attacked
any slave ship in order to free the slaves.
In the south the idea was dawning that slavery was not a very productive means of producing. The industrial revolution was well, under way in the mid 19th century and the slave economies were being vastly out-produced by the new industries in the north. The north looked down on
slavery [as they should do!] and were free to buy the southern slaves
out. That would have been one way of dealing with this problem.
Another was to simply out-produce the south and import cotton from industrial countries like India so the south would be more or less economically "forced" to change their production pattern i.e.. going from the economic slave model to a industrial society.
Of course there could be made many objections against this line of
reasoning, but the point is that these proposed solutions were
peaceful! And also notice that these solutions are trade based.
Would the southern citizens really be willing to forgo the increase in wealth
that an possible southern industrial society would be offering them?
It is known that many slaveholders were living a very marginal economic
existence, would they not be willing to change there way of producing?
So what I am basically saying is that the wave if change was well on it's
way and that the south, in economics terms, were already doomed, more or
less, to change.
Until that is, Lincoln forced this process into a war.
All this talk about history got me thinking about my own states History Vermont was the 14th state and our ancestors had to fight to not become part of New York :-D it was nice ... this has been a productive thread
