Southerners fought the Civil War like crazy because the Industrial Revolution had not yet brought machines to replace human labor. Southern plantation owners could not imagine how to survive economically without slaves. And, in point of fact, when slavery was abolished, the economy perished, so, in truth, they did not survive abolition, economically.
To them, it was an existential struggle. Not a justification, not an excuse, just a fact.
The production of, say, cotton, by unfree labor was shifted elsewhere, e.g., India and Egypt, and we could look at coolie labor, as well. Unfree labor continues to this date. Debt bondage, human trafficking, sharecropping, etc.
Fighting like crazy to preserve the right to exploit others is entirely inconsistent with the belief in freedom. One of life's little paradoxes.
Still, as one of the minority who actually pays taxes to support the ones who don't -- hmmmm. Why? What would happen if we just said no? |
