On Sat, 8 Aug 2020 22:26:00 -0600, rbowman wrote:

On 08/08/2020 08:31 PM, wrote:
I suspect capitalists north and south were worried that the US
agricultural and hence raw material industry would collapse without
slavery. The reality is, the economics did not change that much. A
large number of blacks just transitioned from being indentured slaves
to wage slaves and their life did not change that much. It is why I
think slavery itself could have withered on the vine and died from
it's own weight if rich northerners and europeans simply demanded it
by way of boycotting slave grown goods. Who knows what the south and
the plight of black people would have evolved to being without that
war.

The real problem was tariffs. After 1812 the northern capitalists fought
for high tariffs to protect the fledgling industries. This was
detrimental to the southern planters who preferred to trade cotton for
cheaper British products. The 1832 Nullification Crisis was about
another bump in the tariffs in 1828. South Carolina was on the verge of
seceding but Jackson smoothed it over with a tariff reduction.

That had nothing to do with slavery but the problem remained simmering
away. The south preferred trading with Britain. Even before the onset of
the Civil War the north was blockading southern ports to try to force
the south into being a vassal state growing cotton for the northern
mills and buying their expensive goods.


People here ignore the function of Ft Sumpter in those blockades.