if their social beliefs had not prevented them for carrying out the public policies that would bring it about. Pretending that the souths economic problems are due to acts of God or nature or the War of Northern Aggression isn't going to be very helpful in figuring out how to raise the standards of living for everyone. It's almost funny in a way that apparently lots of southerners STILL haven't gotten over the idea the way to prosperity is to force as many people as possible to work as hard as possible while paying them as little as possible. Really, honestly, I'm telling you the truth, that DOESN'T WORK.

What I mean is that the south could have ignored northern complaints about slavery and nothing would have been done to force them to give it up, at least not in the 1860s, but becasue the south felt compelled to respond to the norths "insults" they started the war of secession and gave the north the opportunity to end slavery.

As in the American Revolution European involvement was decisive: After the war started and the north made it clear that it was willing to fight and made the end of slavery a war aim public opinion in England would not allow the English govt to aid the south and defend slavery when the north was willing to end it.

although things were much better there than in the south for most of the 20th century for the reasons that I mentioned. Maybe California would be a better comparison.

they are not doing well primarily because of their low cost labor but because they are producing value in the global economy (with a great deal of help from people, institutions and policies created where people understand that collecting all the money at the top and not investing any of it in public goods will not produce widespread prosperity).

Slavery ended because the British outlawed it and because the North defeated it in war. This resulted in a situation where slavery was stigmatized and under pressure everywhere. If the South had won they would have had the west, now all slave, and were planning on expanding southward. The south, west, central and south America could have been made into a giant slave based empire that could resist pressure from Europe on slavery and allow the true basis of true civilization, white supremacy and black slavery, to be securely established for all time. This at least was the plan of some leaders of the Confederacy.

Because England had a huge world wide maritime military empire and the North did not. If the North had had the kind of overwhelming power necessary to force the south to give up slavery peacefully the south wouldn't have had the ability to make the war bloody. You can't have it both ways.

the situation can never be resolved. Slavery only died a "natural death" anywhere because people worked and fought to end it against those attempting to use force to maintain it. The south fought the war to preserve slavery. Lincoln and many other people were opponents of slavery their entire lives. Very few though were willing to fight a war to end slavery and they knew that nothing else would end it. When the south gave them to chance by secession lincoln took it but he had to be careful, if the south had done just a little better on the battlefield before the 1864 elections the north would have voted to settle with the south.

the south declined and the north withdrew. Blaming bad race relations in the south on reconstruction is like blaming lynching on outside agitators stirring up the nigras, in fact it's the same thing.

of course no one is pure and history is complicated but when all of the "nuance" is deployed to deny or obscure central incontestable facts it is impossible not to conclude that one is dealing with an obscuring liar.

the south was allowed to reestablish a social system that was almost equivalent to slavery, was allowed to dictate in popular culture and history a self serving revisionst history whereby the southern slaveholders were the innocent victims of blacks and the north, and the fact that the north has spent the last 150 years, in effect apologizing to the south for taking away their slaves. It won't last forever though.

Yeah, we know all about it, DNA tests are a big help there.

but I don't think there are very many people anywhere who are actually interested in the issues who can look at the war and especially at what the north failed to do after the war and claim absolute moral purity for the north and I don't think there ever were all that many who tried to.

regardless of what the economic conditions and relationships were at the time. The seeming inability to face this undercuts claims to reasonableness.

but look who is standing in the way now.

not the economic conditions and yes I understand that poor people generally have constrained ability to exercise their rights, still to pick one of many examples; blacks in the south could not vote, workers in the north usually could.

non historical person. I see it was maybe ambiguous.

and their white supporters in a totally successful attempt to make sure they didn't get any

abuse. When will the injustice to the white south ever end.

if the south had been forced back into the union early all indications are that they would have been allowed to keep their slaves.

It was relatively easy for the Northern states to end slavery because slaves became so valuable after the invention of the cotton gin and the opening of the Louisiana purchase lands to cotton cultivation that they were all sold "down the river" and there weren't that many of them and they weren't really needed in the north.