Also, I find it interesting how folks can predict that slavery would die out on its own in the South.
Fair question.
Any ideas as to when or what specific event/mechanism?
Yes. We have models, because other countries (including England) had already ended slavery without bloodshed. In England, the government "bought" all the slaves and then freed them, before banning the practice. Buying out the existing slave-owners is a non-bloody way of handling their financial objections, and is much, much cheaper than a civil war.
Pressure to end slavery would have come from more than one place, but international trade was a notable one. By the late 19th century, Europe and England would without doubt have imposed trade barriers against goods produced with slave labor. In fact, they did more-or-less that during the war between the states. Foreign sympathy mostly went to the Confederacy, because they saw the primary issue as economic oppression by the North. They didn't send much aid to the South, though, mainly because of their objections to slavery. Were it not for slavery, or even if the South could have spun their cause better, they might well have had enough foreign support to win their independence.
"Economics" is NOT a sufficient answer.
I agree. Economics
is the answer, but just saying that doesn't explain anything.
The biggest economic drawback of slavery is that it fails to take advantage of the division of labor. A slave-owner must provide shelter, food, clothing, medical care, etc., and must deal with all sorts of logistics like the upkeep of children and elderly slaves. In some sense the problem is still there if he frees his slaves and then hires them back; he's still carrying their costs of living. But he no longer has to set aside land for slave shacks, nor to employ guards at night to watch them, etc. He doesn't have to devote manpower to handling the kids or caring for the elderly, which would have been done by a few slaves who therefore weren't picking cotton.
He does better if he frees his slaves and hires them back, even if his labor costs are unchanged. More of his land is growing cotton. All of his manpower is producing his cash crop. When someone is too old or too young to work, he doesn't have to think about them at all. The workers handle their own food, clothing and doctor visits, on their own time. He can let most of his guards and overseers go. He's free to focus on the one thing he does best: sell his crop.
If he clings to his slave-holding ways, as some surely would, the competition will clean his clock. He simply can't compete with someone who focuses exclusively on business. Eventually he'll be driven bankrupt unless he gets out of the slave business.
I think it unsupportable to predict its immanent demise. Heck, Saudi Arabia only officially ended slavery in the 1960s, though the practice is still widespread in SA and other bass-ackwards dunghole countries.
True. But the main thing that makes slave-owning profitable is precisely that they
are bass-ackward dungholes. One African harvesting yams with motorized equipment would out-compete dozens doing it with slave labor. But they mostly don't
have mechanical equipment, and the roads suck, and everything is home-made. Their local economy is too primitive, and they're too poor, for an effective division of labor. A solid, free-market economy would change all that.
It's no coincidence that the end of slavery roughly coincided with the industrial revolution.
--Len.
