Of course, the North went to war to save the Union, not to abolish slavery, but abolishing slavery became a justification for the war, and most people today are likely to ask how slavery could have been abolished without the Civil War. So I discussed the pros and cons of war as a military strategy for emancipation, and compared this with other antislavery strategies.
Although chattel slavery was abolished after the Civil War, the civil rights of blacks were subverted for another century, so one certainly couldn't claim that war did the job. I think it's more meaningful to ask which strategy or combination of strategies would have have been most likely to secure equal rights for the former slaves and their descendants.
One big problem with the military strategy, particularly if one side wins a decisive victory and is able to humiliate the losers, is that the losers are likely to want revenge. There will be an uncontrollable backlash. There was a backlash in Europe following the Napoleonic conquests, a backlash in Germany following the imposition of the vindictive Versailles Treaty, on and on.
Moreover, a number of times Americans have gotten into wars and then gone home. Certainly that was the case after the Civil War. After the losers were outraged by the death, destruction and humiliation, the Northerners went home and let the losers take it out on the former slaves. Nobody could be counted on to protect the former slaves.
Well, suppose Northerners didn't go home. Suppose they occupied the South for decades, maybe up to the present. What might have happened? We might have ended up with chronic violence such as has plagued Northern Ireland, with local guerrillas targeting the occupation forces, and hatred continuing from one generation to the next.
War isn't a shortcut for achieving equal rights or any other social reform that needs widespread acceptance. War is the long way around.
I believe the experience of emancipation in the Western Hemisphere suggests that persistent application of multiple antislavery strategies would have worked in the United States, as elsewhere, if the Civil War had been avoided, and equal rights probably would have been secured decades sooner.
by Jim M Powell on February 7, 2008 at 6:42 PM