Quote: (04-25-2017 02:22 PM)weambulance Wrote:
Importation of slaves was halted in 1808. Are you suggesting it would've been more costly to just, I dunno, buy the remaining slaves' freedom than fight a war that killed 600,000 Americans?
Importation of slaves might have been halted, but what to do with the slaves when the institution ended was a pretty big problem that the South had to figure out. (That is, were the freedmen going to all be shipped back to Africa to start a second Liberia, were they going to be equal citizens, were they going to be second class citizens, etc.) They were pretty understandably uneasy about this and wanted to decide it on their own timeline. The North didn't really care, as far as I know.