(August 17, 2017 at 5:07 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Slavery would never have survived the Industrial Revolution, it was far too inefficient a system to linger. I'm always amused by northern industrialists who railed against the evils of slavery while treating the workers in their fire-trap factories as expendable and infinitely replaceable Irish scum. Being poor in 1860 pretty much sucked. Slave or free.
True, but there is still a world of difference. The irish worker didn't worry about his wife and children being sold off. But yeah, slavery would not have survived in the long term, regardless of the civil war.