When would slavery in the Southern States have ended...

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Despite the obvious immorality of slavery, I have read estimates that there are as many as 30 million slaves in the world at this time. This may be the highest the number has ever been

This is a tough question, I'm not really sure slavery would ever have been abolished. Remember the rationale was that blacks were little more than an animal. It is a lot harder for a people to rationalize slavery when they accept the other person is also a human being.

I think it would have eventually been phased out in the plantations for the most part, and it would probably have taken a darker turn.

I really hate to say this, but I think the Civil War was the only way slavery could have been ended in the United States, because the North being opposed to slavery made the Southerners dig in their heels on the issue.

Around the time Brazil abolished slavery perhaps? Then again slavery was never completely abolished. The 13th Amendment permits prisoners to be used as slaves and they were used mercilessly to that end by private business for decades. The practice was stopped in the 1930s I think only to be revived thanks to ALEC. There was even a case in 2005 where beef tainted with rat droppings was not recalled because the government did not want people to know that slave labour was employed in processing it.

The plantations switched largely from a slave-based system to a sharecropper system.

Today, Mexican migrants largely fill the agricultural role previously performed by slaves.

Probably paying migrant labourers during key moments (such as harvest time) may be more cost-effective than keeping slaves alive and finding tasks for them throughout the year.

3/5ths Compromise.

The economic trend was toward industrial type production. In order to man industrial jobs one needs a workforce that can read fairly complicated material. Now how well could the black slave population be controlled once many of the black slaves learned how to read and got a hold of material that promoted discontent with their condition? Also, servile labor is less efficient in doing complicated tasks such as are required by an industrial economy. This trend would have led to a marginal decrease in the productivity of slaves which like any other "livestock" have to be fed and cared for so they can work. The economics of slavery would have led to its demise. See what happened in Brazil. They ended slavery without a war and without servile insurrection. Slavery simply ceased to pay for itself.

ruveyn

Although learning was usually discouraged, many slaves were skilled craftsmen, carpenters, blacksmiths, etc. The owner could make money by lending his slaves' services to others.

A slave might be less productive than someone working for his own wages. However, subtract the free man's wage from the value of his output, and the capitalist might decide that slave labour was preferable in some instances. At least the threat of turning work over to slaves might tend to depress wages and encourage paid employees to work harder.

It appears that slavery continues to exist in Brazil, but in a more informal way than previously.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/ja ... rm-workers

Please define slavery.

Modern forms of slavery very much do exist still, and the numbers for it still continue to increase.

Things like debt-bondage are considered by many to be tantamount to slavery and such things exist extensively in asia, africa, latin america & the caribbean.

A couple of points that I haven't yet seen addressed:
1)first, low-wage jobs, debt, inequality - as bad for both individual and society as they clearly are - are nowhere near as bad as slavery. In slavery, your master could decide when, if, and to whom you would marry, and owned your children; in slavery, you couldn't go find another master if the current one troubled you. In slavery, your master could beat, rape, and/or kill you with complete impunity; slaves could literally be treated worse than dogs can legally be treated today, and while the neighbors might disapprove, no one could do anything about it.
2)There are, indeed, slave-like or near-slave-like conditions in many areas of the world today, including the United States.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 65881.html

To begin with, the United States has never had a civil war. A civil war is defined as a war between 2 opposing factions for control of the same government (such as the War of the Roses or the Cromwellian Wars). This was not the case with the US. The southernstates were fighting to seperate from our government - and this it was a rebellion or seperatist's war. As for slavery, it would have died of natural causes by the late 1860's. Both Congress and the courts were gearing up to end it anyway. Roger B. Taney, the old fart that ruled on Dred Scott, along with his fellow old farts were "buying the farm". It was inevitable.

Longshanks

Please name your sources or source on the so-called CSA designs for the Carribean, as well as Central and South America. I also find this to be an unlikely scenario for the simple fact that the British did retain many of her Carribean Posessions at that time and did maintain a battle fleet to protect those posessions. Certainly you are aware that Britain outlawed slavery at this time in history, and that after the Wilkes Affair, Britain had doubled her fleet in the area as well as boosted Canada's occupation force to 50,000 troops. In fact, we were narrowly avoiding war with Britain, who, according to Gladstone, was preparing to invade both the Union and the Confederacy. You are aware, of course, that the only reason Britain didn't invade was the Russian threat for war in return. Again, sir, name your source.

Longshanks

Okay it wasn't a civil war, What should he have said, a war between the states? Oh wait, it is always referred to as a civil war, what is the point in calling it a different name for no reason unless we are just trying to confuse people. For example pencil lead. Is it lead? no. Does that mean we should start calling it graphite? Not unless you want people to not know what you are talking about.

History is written from the point of views of the victors. Since the Union won, and the South was in it both before and after the war, it was a civil war. The same things happened with, for example, the Social War in the 1st century BC. The socii wanted to leave Rome, but failed, so it counts as a civil war. In any case, there is no exact definition of what is a civil war, as opposed to another kind of war. Using traditional terminology is preferable.



If the CSA had won the war, or if for some reason nothing happened to change the status quo, so many things would have been different that I think it is irrelevant to know what was already in the pipeline, or what wasn't, or what could have happened anyway. Even bringing up what happened in Brasil or elsewhere is irrelevant. One of the important anti-slavery pressure was international relationships. If there were still a pro-slavery major power, it is likely that the timescale everywhere could have been very different. We can't justify a date by comparing to other countries (at least post-1860). The world would have been completely different, and this is not hyperbole.

Also, there are many different scenario, leading to different results: another compromise could have preempted the Civil War, or it could have been won early without challenging slavery, or it could have been won by the CSA.

Economically, I don't see why it couldn't have lasted even until today. Even though slavery, on the whole, is inefficient, the point is that its evolution is decided at a very low level, by individual slave-owners taken globally, not by a theoretical "best option possible" as seen from an economist's point of view. Even if we forget the fact that slaves gave their owner a special social status, and if we say that for some reason the owners decided not to perpetuate slavery just to adhere to long formed mental schemas, it is very likely that the easiest way to increase production and profit, under slavery, would still be to increase the number of slaves instead of the individual efficiency of each of them. The main problem to slavery would not have been internal, but external -- slavery is not very good on World opinion, and the South lived by exporting produce. It is not unlikely that slavery would have been a roadblock to commercial interests abroad, especially in European democracies affected by public opinion. As I remember it, that was what happened in Brasil too. I don't know how far it pushes the end of slavery, but I think it would be caused more by random evenemential occurrences than by true long term forces.

(clicky)slavery by another name

Aren't petty much all of the Intel chipsets manufactured in the US? Last time I checked they cost about 5 times what the AMD chips manufactured in China do but, for some weird reason they have something north of an 80% marketshare.