Originally Posted by JoeBob


I suspect things would have worked out better for both countries, particularly if there had been no war.

The federal leviathan was born then and though the South saw it coming and that was the real reason for the war, the war itself hastened its coming and brought on the conditions to birth it.


I have to take exception to the first sentence. All one needs to do is look at the US' ascent post Civil War all the way to the mid 50s to put pay to the idea of "being better of". Lincoln should have done EVERYTHING to preserve the country and without that disastrous war. disastrous in so many ways to include just as you say, the rise of Federal Power. Slavery was a dying trade and would have eventually gone the way of the dinosaur as technology AND Western culture and values evolved. The disdain for Blacks would have never risen to the levels after the war, when the North shoved them down the throats of the Southern states. It's arguing a negative, but an agrarian, single crop economy would have relegated the South to just an enlarged version of pre-Castro Cuba, a Second World country with a paper-thin economic footing and if as you say the "latin flavor" would have seeped it...I don't think so..

A good principle to guide me through life: “This is all I have come to expect, standard lackluster performance. Trust nothing, believe no one and realize it will only get worse…”