A thought about slavery

Andrew Jackson, while president, in the "nullification controversy" established that states did not have the right to nullify federal laws. The Civil War established that states did not have the right to leave the union. Neither then nullification controversy nor the Civil War was explicitly about slavery, but many people feel that it was the underlying issue. I wonder.

The Atlantic slave trade had been abolished and European nations had abolished slavery within their territories. Many southern leaders recognized that slavery would not last permanently in the United States. Would they fight to maintain slavery for a limited period.

Of course, the slaves themselves were universally opposed to slavery. Moreover, many free persons in the south did not own slaves and in fact suffered economically from slavery. Political power in the South however was controlled by an aristocratic class of slaveholders, and slavery was considerably to the interests of these who profited most from slavery.

I suggest that the aristocratic power elite in the South was seeking to maintain their way of life rather than slavery per se. Note that in Europe the abolition of serfdom had occurred without the loss of political domination by the aristocracy. As long as the economy was based on extractive industries and the aristocracy owned the land and natural resources, they maintained their way of life. So too, the southern aristocracy in the United States might have retained its way of life had slavery been slowly abolished, to be replaced by a society with strong class distinctions. Indeed, I suppose that the segregation in the south that replaced slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction had something of the same effect.

In Europe it was the rise of classes that succeeded economically from commerce and manufacturing industry that eventually competed and out-competed the landed aristocracy. In the United States the northern states were building societies based on commerce and manufacturing while the south remained an agricultural economy. I suggest that the southern aristocracy in the first half of the 19th century correctly saw their way of life threatened by the growing political power of the north, which in turn was based on a different economic base than the south's extractive agricultural industry.

Increasing numbers of people in the north correctly saw slavery as an unacceptable evil, but the controversy between north and south may well have been more about the threat to the way of life of the southern aristocracy by the social changes in the north than about slavery per se.

Even today, I suggest, the split between red states (which are more rural, with economies more based on extractive industries) and blue states (which are more urban, with economies more based on manufacturing and service industries) may be based on the different ways of life and the perceived threats to a way of life if one or the other faction gains excessive control over the machinery of the federal government.