I Would Like to Talk (Civilly) About the Generalization of "White People"

[BmorePat87]

(09-29-2016, 03:33 PM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: They inherited an economy that was built by the British, using British methods (slavery). If they had gotten rid of slavery from Day 1, their economy would have collapsed instantly, the brand new country would have fallen into ruin, and America would either...

1. Look like the Middle East today, with no government worth mentioning. (Doesn't Syria look lovely this time of year?)
or
2. Be under British rule again after they walked right in without a fight because the government couldn't pay or equip their soldiers, and then we'd have slavery for even longer and all the things that America invented or introduced technology or ideologically might not have ever happened.

Shitty that it lasted as long as it did? Most certainly. Horrible? Yup.

But lets not forget that as soon as the fledgling country was no longer in danger of instantly collapsing (they fought well over a dozen and a half wars in the 80 years between winning the Revolution and the Civil War) the US killed up to 750,000 of it's own (not even counting wounded) to end slavery (though there were other issues in the Civil War as well).



If you know a way to entirely rebuild an economy overnight after it had been a certain way for 150 years, while also fighting tons of wars against a lot of different countries that don't want you to exist, I would love to know it.

Yea, the Civil War wasn't fought to end slavery. 

Also, they didn't have to outright abolish it, but they could have began to decrease it. Instead, the Constitution was written to protect slavery. The South was rewarded with extra representation for slaves, despite them not being citizens, at the cost of slightly higher taxes. Three states forced the other 10 to allow slave trade for another 20 years. They added into the Constitution that runaway slaves had to be returned. 

These few elites were given so much power that, before Lincoln, 10 of the 15 Presidents were slaveholders. None of the 5 who were not got reelected. Those slave holding Presidents sat in office for 50 of the 72 years prior to Lincoln's inauguration. 

Not only did we not allow for slavery to slowly be curbed, we protected it and gave slave owning states more power.