This is the second episode in an occasional series examining major counterfactual questions in history. The first episode asked whether President John F. Kennedy would have withdrawn the U.S. from Vietnam had he lived to win a second term.
The destruction of human chattel slavery in the United States in 1865 was an event of world historical importance. After the incalculable trauma of the Civil War, the ratification of the 13th Amendment ended any possibility that the Southern states would be able to hold onto slavery. Four million formerly enslaved Black people would permanently lose their chains.
What if most of the South hadn’t seceded in 1860-61? The move to exit the Union was supposed to protect slavery but instead led to its destruction. What if Abraham Lincoln hadn’t won the presidential election of 1860 after vowing to put slavery on the course of ultimate extinction?
In this episode of History As It Happens, historian James Oakes weighs in on these power counterfactual questions. It is impossible to know how long slavery may have endured if not for the Civil War, but Mr. Oakes contends that by analyzing the counterfactual, it is possible to clearly see the causes of what actually did occur. In other words, the causal link between antislavery politics and the onset of war should not be obscured. The war simply didn’t happen by accident; it was caused by the political conflict over slavery’s future.
“I have been trying to make the case for a long time now that the Republican Party represented a serious threat to slavery, that secession was not a hysterical overreaction to a nonexistent threat. The Republicans went into the war with an agenda, what I call the antislavery project,” said Mr. Oakes, author of “Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865.”
Also discussed in this episode are Lincoln’s views on slavery’s future and why some people today believe slavery would have lasted well into the 20th century if it were not for the Civil War.
History As It Happens is available at washingtontimes.com or wherever you find your podcasts.
