User Panel
User Panel
User Panel
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:24:06 AM EDT
Hey,
Honestly, I'm curious. How would America developed differently if Slavery was never brought to these shores? I'm not interested in the 88 aspect of "OMG, crime would drop 110%!!1!". I'm more interested in how it would have effected America in regards to industrialization, agriculture, societal, trade, etc. How did America benefit from Slavery and how would it benefit without? Any good books written on the subject? Kevin "  " |
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:27:20 AM EDT
[#1]
OMG, crime would drop....
Just kidding. I'm gonna get in this one on the ground floor. |
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:32:13 AM EDT
[#2]
Hey,
Wiki was no real help: "The wealth of the United States in the first half of the 19th century was greatly enhanced by the labor of African Americans." "The majority of slaveholding was in the southern United States where most slaves were engaged in an efficient machine-like gang system of agriculture." So if they didn't have slaves they'd be poor and lack cotton clothing?  What would have happened if the Civil War didn't happen and 600,000 Americans weren't killed? I'm piqued. Kevin "And hopefully not banned." |
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:36:46 AM EDT
[#3]
1. The Welfare State would be much smaller; or not at all as we know it…
2. The inner cities and ghettos may still exist but the resources to help rebuild such places would be greater. 3. Black racists rev. and politicians wouldn't be pushing agendas openly in the Democrat Party 4. Many of the gun laws we argue about on this board would not have been written. Oh and 5. Basketball Teams wouldn't be as competive |
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:37:02 AM EDT
[#4]
I can't answer your question fully but I will throw this into the mix: Without slave labor there would have been a greater push towards mechanization.
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:37:39 AM EDT
[#5]
Well, more people that are currently living well in America would instead have their body parts floating down some river in Mozambique right now.
Regardless of HOW you got here, it's good that you're here and you're better off. |
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:38:31 AM EDT
[#6]
I think this is the problem with this thread:
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:39:23 AM EDT
[#7]
We would have exported less tobacco and cotton. We would have probably maintained the system of indentured servants longer. The South might have become more industrialized sooner.
That said, the North would still have tried to controlled the South, just like they do today - Red v Blue. I am not sure how much difference it would have made on population demographics. |
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:39:32 AM EDT
[#8]
We wouldn't have the $200 NFA tax, this is well documented.
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:40:46 AM EDT
[#9]
Oh man say that to a racist, angry white lib or a radical black asshole (thank you Eric Cartman for that jewel of a term).... they might just lynch you. |
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:42:09 AM EDT
[#10]
The truth is offensive to some people. |
||
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:42:19 AM EDT
[#11]
Well there would have been no civil war, something that still divides people in this nation today. The South would not have been devastated after the war. The nation would probably not have faced some many economic problems like after the civil war.
Culturally American would be considerably different. With no slavery there wouldn't have been to many Africans in U.S. African Americans have seriously influenced every aspect our culture. So I don't how the U.S. would be different without slavery, but the cultural one would probably be the biggest. |
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:44:35 AM EDT
[#12]
IBTL. and IBTCB (In Before The Confederacy Bashers)
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:47:16 AM EDT
[#13]
Slavery was already on these shores when Europeans arrived in the New World. Read pre-Columbian history!
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:47:39 AM EDT
[#14]
You can't predict how America would be today without slavery. Slavery has impacted America socially and economically since the creation of the nation.
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:49:09 AM EDT
[#15]
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:50:50 AM EDT
[#16]
Without slavery, America would be a much better place to live.
Most of the ills of American society can be linked to slavery and its repercussions. |
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:52:18 AM EDT
[#17]
I disagree with the first part, agree with the second. Surely someone has written a book, or research paper on the subject of "What If: America without Slavery". I know it's controversial, but somewhat topical with all the Slavery related stuff being spouted off by a certain someone in the news. Kevin "*hides*" |
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:52:27 AM EDT
[#18]
And that is the fact. Slavery has existed long before Christopher Columbus convinced Queen Isabella that he had a good idea. |
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:53:23 AM EDT
[#19]
There probably wouldn't be all those funny OWNED!!! pics.
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:56:29 AM EDT
[#20]
My bad! I went to public school. Good quote from Mike Medved: Concerning slavery, Americans never invented it or instituted it – we inherited it, and with such great discomfort that anti-slavery activists were far better represented among the founding fathers (Franklin, Adams, Hamilton) than those who made an active case for slavery. David Brion Davis, the Yale professor who’s written magisterially about the history of the peculiar institution, makes clear the positive role of the American Revolution and its ideals in giving life (after many millennia of slavery) to the abolitionist movement around the world that ultimately put an end to this savage oppression. The United States, in other words, played a unique, prominent role in ending the institution, but played no role in establishing it. Kevin "  "
|
||
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:57:46 AM EDT
[#21]
It could be argues that much of our music would not have existed. The early inventors of Rock and Roll such as Elvis and Buddy Holly are said to have been inspired by black musicians.
Slavery is a highly inefficient method of production, and immigrants were readily available from all over Europe and Asia. It is doubtful that the practice of slavery helped to boost America's development at all. If anything, it stagnated it. You have only to look at Africa and the Middle East to see that Slavery does nothing but retard a culture or society. Slavery was a mistake and a crime that we are still paying for today. |
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:59:50 AM EDT
[#22]
I'm just saying there would be so many hypotheses and guesses as to what America COULD have turned in to that there's no one real answer. Any prediction of what America would be like would simply be a guess: you're removing a main variable from history which shaped/shapes how we view our own society today. |
||
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 10:19:39 AM EDT
[#23]
deleted double post
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 10:21:10 AM EDT
[#24]
If the Indians had compound bows, laser sights, bow stabilizers, aluminum arrows, muzzie broadheads, laser rangefinders, realtree camo and won the Indian wars. You know what we would be doing now? hunting, sitting around the campfire, no taxes, women doing the work, no blacks....
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 10:25:26 AM EDT
[#25]
I saw a bumper sticker once that said, "If I had known they were going to be this much trouble, I would have picked the cotton myself."
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 10:28:40 AM EDT
[#26]
Obama, Jesse and Al would be out of a job.
HK_shitter_03 would have nothing to post. |
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 10:34:05 AM EDT
[#27]
Lincoln would have had to work a little harder to come up with a rallying cry to destroy the sovreignty of the States and bring about the all-powerful Federal Government we all know and love today.
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 10:43:54 AM EDT
[#28]
Unfortunately, some southerners "way back when" didn't value the sovereignty of their fellow human beings, and so we are all paying for it to this day... I guess they should have picked their own damned cotton. |
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 10:46:59 AM EDT
[#29]
Oh yeah, I forgot, slavery only existed in the South. Thanks for reminding me of that.
|
||
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 10:49:24 AM EDT
[#30]
 "Slavery" was not the fault of the American South or "Southerners", it was prevalent in the North as well and has existed since the dawn of time around the globe. |
||
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 11:37:23 AM EDT
[#31]
The Civil War would not have happened (presumably), the south might have industrialized faster, the economy would not have grown as fast up to that point (cotton/tobacco exports = money), the populace overall would be far more homogenous (white European) then and probably today.
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 11:45:29 AM EDT
[#32]
Without slavery, there would have been no plantation agriculture, and the American south would have been much more sparsely populated and developed much much later than it did. Europeans would still have thrived in the northern colonies, but probably not so much as they actually did, given the dependence of much of the commerce of the northern colonies on trade with slavery-dependent markets in the Caribbean. Absent slavery, it's simply the case that most early European colonial efforts in the new world would have been unprofitable. Sufficient European laborers could not be induced or coerced into coming to the western hemisphere, and prior to 19th century advances in medicine, white survival rates in tropical climes were pretty poor, even without being subjected to slavery. In the Caribbean sugar plantations, which were more important in the 18th century than the American cotton plantations, black slaves died in droves, too, but more could always be had cheaply, and they didn't die as quickly as white slaves, who were in any event not so easily available.
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 11:49:56 AM EDT
[#33]
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 11:51:38 AM EDT
[#34]
Having the cotton gin and maybe one or two further early 19th century inventions introduced 100-150 years earlier would make a fascinating alternate history novel. |
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 12:50:04 PM EDT
[#35]
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 12:54:34 PM EDT
[#36]
That pimp wheel from the post earlier wouldn't have taken out that dude BMW M3.
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 12:59:57 PM EDT
[#37]
Rifles with 10+ round mags, pistol grips, bayonets, and laser beams would never have been nicknamed "Assault Weapons".
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 1:04:38 PM EDT
[#38]
Blame Eli Whitney,
w/o the cotton gin slavery would've died out. of course we would also have to go to a skilled gunsmith anytime you need a part for a gun |
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 1:08:07 PM EDT
[#39]
So far you're winning the thread. Thanks for the informative post! Kevin "*re-reads it*" |
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 1:09:30 PM EDT
[#40]
Not to sound racist, but no black people, or very few.
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 1:34:57 PM EDT
[#41]
Thanks.  It's worth noting that the first slaves belonging to European colonists in the New World weren't Africans, but Indians, and in Virginia, European indentures and transported convicts. But Indians died in droves from European diseases to which they had no immunity, and Europe lacked the ready-made slave markets and slave-taking customs of earlier days which still existed in Africa. In the decades before Columbus sailed west, the Portuguese were sailing south, opening the slave trade of Africa to direct European participation. Africans weren't so susceptible to Old World diseases, and had, at least at first, fewer options for flight than enslaved Indians. It should also be noted that most colonies were dedicated to profit first and foremost. They were the commercial ventures of early joint-stock corporations. The Puritan settlements from which so much of America's self-image is derived are exceptional in that they were founded in an attempt to build Zion. The men who went to New Amsterdam, Carolina, or Virginia went there from the beginning to make fortunes. Colonies that were not profitable, of which there were more than a few, could and did fail. Large supplies of slaves provided the labor that made these early colonies successful ventures. Speculating, absent slavery, the European presence in north America prior to the 19th century would have been much smaller than it was. There would probably have been no American War of Independence, and the history of the land that is now the continental US would be more like that of Canada, Australia, or Argentina, with droves of European immigrants arriving in the 19th century as Europe's population exploded. |
||
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 1:47:32 PM EDT
[#42]
Without slavery (or assuming its abolition in the constitution in 1787), and assuming the normal technological developements (steam power, locomotives, cotton gin), then the demand for cotton that was CREATED by these innovations would still require some labor force.
Labor would have been imported, most likely from Africa or the carribean. These workers would have been introduced to America in the early and middle 1800's much like the Germans, Irish, and English that followed them in the middle to late 1800's, and would have spread and assimilated in addition to working the "factory farms" of the old south. There would be predominantly African communities in the south today, as well as in the midwest and other geographic locations. The only difference is that we would think nothing more about them than we do the Germans in Ohio, or the Swedes in Minnesota, or the Russians/Poles in upstate New York. |
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 1:53:48 PM EDT
[#43]
without slavery we would not have "white guilt".
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 1:55:09 PM EDT
[#44]
Far less Black Dick/White Chick porn. Man I love that shit.
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 1:55:54 PM EDT
[#45]
Plenty of individuals would be running around embarrased by a lack of excuses for their behavior.
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 1:56:47 PM EDT
[#46]
+1 
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 2:00:21 PM EDT
[#47]
+1000 
|
||
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 2:01:06 PM EDT
[#48]
Labor in the Caribbean was slave labor, too. There simply wasn't a large enough supply of free labor until the European population explosion of the Industrial Revolution. In theory, there were lots of Chinese and Indians, but in practice, large scale transportation to the western hemisphere from either was prohibitively difficult until the 19th century - too much open ocean to cross - meaning that the southern colonies, the Carribean colonies, and Brazil don't become successful, profitably enterprises until 2 centuries after they actually did. Even Potosi, high in the Andes, depended on African slave labor. America would still have been great for furs, timber and naval stores, fish, and whaling, but cotton, sugar, and tobacco would just have had to wait.
|
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 2:13:20 PM EDT
[#49]
Additionally; Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the good Rev. Wright would likely be working as telemarketers. Barak Obama would have probably found employment in an exclusive womens shoe store, or perhaps at Bonwit Tellers in Manhattan. Condaleeza Rice, Clarence Thomas and others would have become the great Americans they are regardless. |
|||
|
|
|
Posted: 5/1/2008 2:20:19 PM EDT
[#50]
The cotton gin was developed during the Civil War. Lots of inventions occur during war time. Slavery was on it's way out anyway because people knew it was wrong for years. It was only a matter of time. Most plantations were small operations and the slaves and slave owners worked side by side. |
|
|
|
Win a FREE Membership!
Sign up for the ARFCOM weekly newsletter and be entered to win a free ARFCOM membership. One new winner* is announced every week!
You will receive an email every Friday morning featuring the latest chatter from the hottest topics, breaking news surrounding legislation, as well as exclusive deals only available to ARFCOM email subscribers.
AR15.COM is the world's largest firearm community and is a gathering place for firearm enthusiasts of all types.
From hunters and military members, to competition shooters and general firearm enthusiasts, we welcome anyone who values and respects the way of the firearm.
Subscribe to our monthly Newsletter to receive firearm news, product discounts from your favorite Industry Partners, and more.
Copyright © 1996-2024 AR15.COM LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Any use of this content without express written consent is prohibited.
AR15.Com reserves the right to overwrite or replace any affiliate, commercial, or monetizable links, posted by users, with our own.
