Abolishing slaves a strategic move for the US

This is just a theory based on logical assumptions, but I thought it would be good for discussion about slave trading a few hundred years ago and the rise of the industrial age. My inspiration for this thread comes from an article in "The Good News", which is a mainstream Christian publication I received in the mail. In an article entitiled, "How One of Today's 'Bad Guys' Ended the Scourge of Slavery", I was amazed and shaking my head at the belief system in place that governments do things primarily for benevolence and to make the people happy. This article was no different.

Here is an online link to the article (may change).

An excerpt:

There is no doubt about it—the slave trade was abhorrent. Millions of people were transported across the Atlantic in the most horrific of conditions, taken against their will and sold like cattle. Indeed, cattle were treated better than the victims of this despicable trade.............
...............In reviewing the 2005 book Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves by Adam Hochschild, African-American columnist Thomas Sowell wrote: "To me the most staggering thing about the long history of slavery—which encompassed the entire world and every race in it—is that nowhere before the 18th century was there any serious question raised about whether slavery was right or wrong. In the late 18th century, that question arose in Western civilization, but nowhere else."

The book, Sowell notes, "traces the history of the world's first anti-slavery movement, which began with a meeting of 12 'deeply religious' men in London in 1787."

It took 20 years for these men to achieve their goal of ending the slave trade. Sowell continues: "Even more remarkable, Britain [then] took it upon itself, as the leading naval power of the world, to police the ban on slave trading against other nations. Intercepting and boarding other countries' ships on the high seas to look for slaves, the British became and remained for more than a century the world's policeman when it came to stopping the slave trade" ("Today's 'Bad Guys' Ended Slavery," Lansing State Journal, Feb. 12, 2006.)

Note that the article tries to put Britain in a light of taking an action out of righteousness even though the slave trade was quite economically beneficial for the country as well as for America.

But, it is my belief that both GB and America was poised to take advantage of the industrial revolution built on the backs of slaves. By doing so, both countries would have a global advantage by building an industrial infrastructure to mass produce goods and machinery, which the rest of the world could not do yet unless they spent years using slave labor. The US and Britain was well ahead of the game and decided at that point to make the transition in the name of righteousness and then police the world in regards to the slave trade. This would be why the US went through the civil war. Not because slavery was thought to be wrong at the time, but that the north had an agenda to set a dividing line between industrialization and the road thereof which was slavery. The south, not being as industrialized, was caught up in the global western agenda at the time of strategy in making the switch to using slaves to policing their trade.

I am sure many of you civil war buffs should have something to say about the true reasons the US became divided, but I don't think anyone who has studied the topic outside of high school would think it was just because the government felt bad about slavery.

[edit on 24-5-2007 by ben91069]

If i remember correctly, your actually correct... I remember reading that the major reason Lincoln acted when he did in abolishing slavery was to keep Britian out of the war. Due to the political stance GB took involving slavers during the Civil war, it would be wrong for the nation to stand up for slavery after already abolishing it themselves...

It should be noted that the aptly-named 1807 Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves ended America's involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade effective in 1808. The effectiveness of the Act is still the subject of some debate (see here and here), but in any case America's slave population had long been self-sustaining. Great Britain's abolition of slavery and involvement in the American Civil War is a complex issue in and of itself; however, it should also be noted that Britain had only outlawed slavery in 1833, and when Britain did become involved in the War it was not on the side of the abolitionist-leaning North but on that of the slave-holding South, for whom they supplied war materiel and build raiding vessels (like this one) intended to plunder Northern shipping.

It is all too easy to forget that the American Civil War was not fought over slavery - it was fought over secession. Lincoln - like the Republican party at the time - was opposed to the expansion of slavery. Lincoln was personally opposed to slavery, but there is no evidence that he ever intended to abolish slavery before the secession of the south.

The south, on the other hand, knew that Lincoln (and the Republicans) were opposed to the idea of admitting any more slave-holding states to the Union. With any further states being admitted as free states, the southern, slave-holding states would be at an ever-growing disadvantage in the Congress, a disadvantage which they feared would eventually lead to the abolition of slavery. Many believed that this would mean the end of the "traditional" southern way of life (questionable, in my opinion) and the collapse of the southern economy (unquestionably true). Rather than face a slow death the south decided to secede from the Union - an action which, ironically, probably brought about a faster end to slavery than would have otherwise been the case.

I've loved the following passage, taken from a letter Lincoln wrote in 1862, ever since I first read it four or five years ago. It shows him for the man he actually was - a still-admirable, pragmatic, dedicated, brilliant politician - rather than the idealistic abolitionist history has painted him as:

Source: www.topicsites.com...
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause."

I'd love to include links to some of the above Lincoln info, but the best information isn't always available on the internet. I would instead direct interested readers/posters to any one of several excellent Lincoln biographies no doubt available at your local libraries, and especially to Doris Kearns Goodwin's most recent offering, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln.

I forgot I had created this thread and surprised a couple knowledgeable scholars strolled by and posted some juicy stuff. Anyway, I am no historian. I have a high school level of knowledge of history and only use study of human nature to come up with these things. The concept of war over freedom is complete nonsense to me. Our current war led me to look at the civil war. Human nature told me that politically Lincoln used freedom of slaves as an issue to rally the population into a belief system, when there were ulterior motives.

Originally posted by PhloydPhan
It is all too easy to forget that the American Civil War was not fought over slavery - it was fought over secession. Lincoln - like the Republican party at the time - was opposed to the expansion of slavery. Lincoln was personally opposed to slavery, but there is no evidence that he ever intended to abolish slavery before the secession of the south.

Precisely, it was about the economics between an agricultural society in the south supplying goods based on slave labor and an industrial north. Somewhere, some group thought their was an economic inequality and I truly believe the north used slavery to disarm the industry of the south.

I am also ashamed that we teach our children such trash in schools as our textbooks outright claim it was a war over slavery.