...

 BK>>>>  Arguing whether it's constitutional is often a way of avoiding
 BK>>>>  the question of was it the right thing to do.

 BA> Slavery is inherently uneconomical and would have died out
 BA> by the end of the 1800s, because most of the jobs slaves
 BA> had been doing were being done by machines by then.

 There is no reason to believe that. Slaves can run machines, and
 there are a lot of jobs that could be done by slaves today.
 There are more slaves in this world today than there were in
 1860. And there are still slaves in this country.

 Perhaps the greatest economic advantage to slavery is that it
 also holds down the wages of the free workers. Just as illegal
 immigrants do. When a free man has to compete for work with
 slaves he can't demand what his work would otherwise be worth.
 The construction of the capital in DC with at least some portion
 of slave labor is an example of that.

 BA> Freeing the slaves would have happened anyway, Lincoln's
 BA> unConstitutional little war only speeded it up by 35-40
 BA> years, and killed 300,000 people in the process - and also
 BA> resulted in 150 (and counting) years of enmity in some
 BA> areas.

 That's 40 years. That's a whole generation. A whole nother
 generation living in slavery. Actually, more like two
 generations growing up in slavery.

 A quick look at "The Historical Statistics of the United States
 From Colonial Times to 1970" shows there were about 4 million
 slaves in this country in 1860. From 1820 to 1860 the slave
 population had grown aprox 25% per decade. Four decades means
 another 5.75 million people living in slavery. That's aprox 9.75
 million people living in slavery.

 So, the number killed in the war was somewhat less than 10% of
 the total number of slaves, and about 3% of the number who
 probably would have been slaves at the end of your 40 years.

 Seems your numbers are wrong by 100%. The estimated dead are
 over 600K. Though yours is close on combat deaths, disease
 claimed twice as many as battle.

 An estimated 258,000 of those killed were fighting for the side
 that wanted to keep those people slaves. I see little reason to
 mourn their deaths.

 Of the 360,000 estimated on the union side, it is sad, but
 still, about 4% of the number they saved from slavery.

 The 150 years of enmity came from the side that wanted to keep
 slaves. And they did their best to keep black people enslaved,
 under laws and terror that served much the same purpose. So I
 have little sympathy for them.

 That enmity hurt the South much more than the North. Believe me,
 we felt little inconvenience from it.


BOB KLAHN bob.klahn{at}sev.org   http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn

... Basics of Catholocism: If anyone anywhere is hungry, it's your fault.
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