Was the American Civil War inevitible?

[derspiess]

I think it was.  There were some deep divisions and our national identity needed to be settled.  The seeds of secession had been sewn in the 1830s and it was going to rear its ugly head sooner or later.

[Lettow77]

 Or these deep divisions could be allow to break on fault lines and create an amicable division.  It isn't clear why one national identity had to strangle the other rather than suffer both to live.

[Martim Silva]

Slavery, Schlavery.

Fact is, before the ACW, the Americans saw themselves first and foremost as citizens of their own states; the US came second.

Since the government in Washington would end up trying to assert a firmer unity and control of the country, that a part of it would eventually violently resist this in the future was a given; the rest are mere details.

Of course, the same can be said about the EU; we currently say there is no chance of that because our 'civil war' was in fact WWII [it was actually portrayed as that at the time, though by Germany and not the Allies] and so our path for integration is now set and we will progress in peace.

Weather this is true or not, is something time will tell. I myself suspect that we will end up repeating the US experience, but all european officials/governments will reject this possibility.

[derspiess]

Or these deep divisions could be allow to break on fault lines and create an amicable division.  It isn't clear why one national identity had to strangle the other rather than suffer both to live.

Sure.  I guess that could have happened.  Problem was there was no legal provision for states leaving the Union. 

[derspiess]

Slavery, Schlavery.

Fact is, before the ACW, the Americans saw themselves first and foremost as citizens of their own states; the US came second.

Stop right there.  *Some* did, particularly in the south.  But by no means was that the majority view.

[dps]

Slavery ending was inevitable, but the war was not.

I'm not so sure about the end of slavery being inevitable, at least not before the end of the 1800s.

[Lettow77]

You don't mean to say the colored community might have had to wait up to all of forty years, do you?

[CountDeMoney]

Enough of these goddamn Timmay retro threads.

[garbon]

You don't mean to say the colored community might have had to wait up to all of forty years, do you?

This might be the most repugnant portion of this recent exchange.

[Eddie Teach]

I think it was.  There were some deep divisions and our national identity needed to be settled.  The seeds of secession had been sewn in the 1830s and it was going to rear its ugly head sooner or later.

Poll question is asking about 1815. It may have been inevitable by 1840, but even then I'm not sure.

[dps]

You don't mean to say the colored community might have had to wait up to all of forty years, do you?

This might be the most repugnant portion of this recent exchange.

Hey, I certainly agree that chattel slavery is an abomination, and I'm glad we got rid of it.  I wish we'd gotten rid of it earlier, or better yet, never had it.  But I don't think it's repugnant to think that without the war, it would have continued to be a cancer in our country for a lot longer. 

[garbon]

You don't mean to say the colored community might have had to wait up to all of forty years, do you?

This might be the most repugnant portion of this recent exchange.

Hey, I certainly agree that chattel slavery is an abomination, and I'm glad we got rid of it.  I wish we'd gotten rid of it earlier, or better yet, never had it.  But I don't think it's repugnant to think that without the war, it would have continued to be a cancer in our country for a lot longer. 

I quoted a post where a poster suggested it was no big thing if slavery lasted another 40 years.

[dps]

You don't mean to say the colored community might have had to wait up to all of forty years, do you?

This might be the most repugnant portion of this recent exchange.

Hey, I certainly agree that chattel slavery is an abomination, and I'm glad we got rid of it.  I wish we'd gotten rid of it earlier, or better yet, never had it.  But I don't think it's repugnant to think that without the war, it would have continued to be a cancer in our country for a lot longer. 

I quoted a post where a poster suggested it was no big thing if slavery lasted another 40 years.

Oh. I misunderstood your post.

[PDH]

The Civil War was inevitable because the South (personified here because they were a huge bag of dicks) based their social and economic system on fallacies and lies.  When the reckoning became apparent, instead of being able to modify the abhorrent system they propped up the South was reduced to public suicide and eventual hope that they could gain something in martyrdom.

They failed, and are still the retarded portion of the country.

[Lettow77]

 I suppose, setting aside purely the qualms that may exist in invading your neighbors because you hold their domestic policies to be disagreeable, it would not be hard to fix an expenditure cost in dead and maimed (to say nothing of the financial tally incurred in sustaining a four year war and the material invested and expended) associated with each freed slave. The barest, most cursory glance suggests that the war produced roughly 600,000 dead, while the 1860 census listed 3,953,761 slaves- suggesting that, disregarding all other (presumably lesser) costs, for the bargain-rate price of one dead soldier upwards of six slaves got a forty year head-start on freedom.

This freedom, being as it was imposed by an outside force that lacked the willpower for a prolonged and sustained total subjugation of the South, was necessarily a tenuous one that caused much ill-will among the white and black communities, with social controls to restore de facto white supremacy being an overriding social imperative on the part of the Southern whites- Had the South provided for manumission on its own terms, race relations and the economic and social position of the Southern blacks might have been immeasurably improved. (Of course, it goes without saying that -everyone- in the South's economic position would be improved without the devastation occasioned by a desperate war waged against both the South's armed and unarmed occupants).

Besides the fact that the subjugation of the entire national entity of the South seems a poor price to pay for the decidedly fleeting and insubstantial exaltation of a minority section, the American public seems to have paid a terrible price that could have been avoided without incident.