Quote:
Originally Posted by Double Eagle
Question for anyone arguing the just let them go side:
In the counterfactual of a successful secession, how long would slavery have to endure as an institution before you would change your mind about the necessity of the Civil War as fought?
It is a fallacy to think that the Civil War was fought to force the South to abolish slavery. Wars are not waged over an issue like that, by other people than the enslaved or their relatives. The fact that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the seceding states is pretty telling in that regard.
The slave emancipation was a side effect of the war (be it a very good one), and was used as an agitating factor to gain support from nations that had already abolished slavery, from the population of the states that were already slave free and from the slaves in the Southern States themselves. A lot of slaves signed up to fight on the Union's side of the war.
Saying the war was fought to abolish slavery is like saying the US invaded Iraq in defense of human rights and democracy. While it is easy to support a war for such reasons, these are never the primary reasons for the people in charge to wage a war for.
Being against the war in Iraq does not mean that you are pro a Saddam Hussein like dictatorship and likewise, saying that States should have a right to secede does not mean you are pro-slavery. This should be obvious.
To answer your question: I have no idea. I wouldn't expect it to have lasted decades longer, but it's hard to tell as the abolishment in the US may have been a catalytic event for other parts of the Americas in the abolishment of slavery. Then again, it may have been an inevitable development, that was coincidentally accelarated by the Civil War because it turned into an important mean to gain support and win the war.
This is not in defence of either side of the conflict btw, I don't know enough about the Civil War to have a well informed opinion on the broader issues that lied underneatch the conflict.