I was reading an online forum and this question was asked by a poster and would like people's opinions:
Was the Civil War truly necessary to end chattel slavery? I don't think it was. Assuming for the sake of argument that that is indeed the case, the question arises: how could it have been ended peacefully? Ideally via Constitutional amendment. But it's extremely doubtful such an amendment would have passed. So what would have been the next-best solution? In my opinion (and this is subject to change if anyone has a better idea), the next-best solution would have been simply this: instead of wasting billions of dollars on a war that claims over half a million lives and utterly destroys countless cities and towns, use that money to purchase all slaves, transport them to the free states, and then immediately FREE them and give each of them the proverbial "forty acres and a mule."
Was the Civil War truly necessary to end chattel slavery? I don't think it was. Assuming for the sake of argument that that is indeed the case, the question arises: how could it have been ended peacefully? Ideally via Constitutional amendment. But it's extremely doubtful such an amendment would have passed. So what would have been the next-best solution? In my opinion (and this is subject to change if anyone has a better idea), the next-best solution would have been simply this: instead of wasting billions of dollars on a war that claims over half a million lives and utterly destroys countless cities and towns, use that money to purchase all slaves, transport them to the free states, and then immediately FREE them and give each of them the proverbial "forty acres and a mule."