Subject: Re: Our Founding Fathers Said What?
It's not my main concern. I was saying "spill it now" (1700s) "or spill it later" (1860s). But it was going to be spilled.

I think that without the Civil War, the South likely would have employed slavery into the 20th century. Maybe even into my lifetime. The South would be a very different place without free black persons, and without free black persons I don't think the South would have been motivated to change. It was the economic backbone of their primary industry (i.e. agriculture), without which it was very difficult to prosper with agriculture. We now often use undocumented workers whom we can pay less (because they can't complain to the authorities). Not exactly slavery, of course. But the economics say that farms and plantations need to use the cheapest labor they can, so they do.