Confederate Excuse Makers

We long ago grew tired of the American Civil War. This was probably because we attained our majority in the 1990's in the aftermath of Ken Burn's epic documentary of same and spent a good chunk of that decade living in Virginia, all be it the northern part.

We hold no truck with Confederate excuse makers. You know the type, the South was right...the Civil War was about state's rights...slavery would have died out anyway...blah, blah blah.

Let's get something straight.  Slavery would have survived into the 20th century.

The South had staked its entire identity on the notion that slavery was necessary and even humane. The South without slavery is like Britain without the monarchy or France without the Germans to surrender to.

As the economics of slavery became more and more untenable Richmond would have done everything it could to prop up the peculiar institution. Let's imagine laws dictating X number of slaves be held for X number of acres of farmland owned; subsidized slave purchases, tax breaks per slave held, etc. etc.

Heck think of the industry that would have been put out of business by slavery. Chain and collar manufactures, slave auctioneers, slave hunters. Heck a whole publishing market existed for books on the care and keeping of slaves. Any emancipation effort would have met with considerable opposition from this sector.

Sorry my Southern partisan friends, but your alternate Confederacy was based on slavery and without the peculiar institution had no reason for being.