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Hi, I'm teaching a bunch of 16-18 year old history students and we're looking at the causes and consequences of the American Civil War. We have started looking at the nature of the Southern States pre-war and the nature of US chattel slavery. They need to understand issues like the idea that if the Union had not pressured the South (over things like Lincoln's plan to not expand slavery into new states), slavery might have died out anyway. At this stage I have suggested to them that chattel slavery was more robust and flexible than pre-modern slavery (eg slave owners could hire out their slaves to the railway building companies etc) and that therefor the institution could conceivably have survived a lot longer. I pointed out to them that slave owners could choose to make more "conventional" investment choices but chose to reinvest in slaves and cotton lands as a means of achieving a return - that "unfree" slave labour is different from "unfree" peasant labour in that it can be sold to another slaver where a peasant is bound to the land. I've suggested that in many ways US slavery was a distorted version of capitalism rather than a whole different pre-modern economic system. However I feel a bit out of my depth here and have been improvising a bit. I wonder if anyone could point me to some accessible online resources on this question (and the Civil War issue itself) that I could use. Obviously when we come to the consequences, I'll be looking at reconstruction, the enduring legacy (Jim Crow etc), ongoing loyalty to the Southern flag with all that that suggests, popular culture (music etc). I know there are lots of US people on this list and y'all know about this stuff . . . Thanks in anticipation, John _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
