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Comment by simple-thoughts | Hacker News Reader

Most settler colonial states under British rule gained independence without death and murder, unlike the USA. It’s unlikely the USA would have been different if it’s population had been less bloodthirsty.

US Slavery as an institution was gradually on the way out before the civil war. Again a bloodthirsty mass movement was not willing to let time take its course. Slavery is wrong but murder is worse.

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US slavery was not on the way out. It was other way round, actually. It was super profitable and powerful. It was also gaining legal protections. There was no active threat to it and the actual dispute and conflict was about new territories.

Also majority of abolitionists were pacifists to a fault. Literally to a fault.

Yet also, slavery was holding only due to violence. Both violence against white abolitionists and against blacks - slaves and free. Violence here includes murder and torture.

This is such a piss poor take I am wondering if it's in bad faith?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA

>The Part of History You've Always Skipped | Neoslavery

'Slavery' did not end at the end of the civil war. It continued on till WWII and in many ways was somehow even worse after the civil war.

The confederacy could easily have prevented the war by not attacking union forts. And as you say the war did not end slavery. So all we’re left with is a thirst for blood.

I think all you've stated is "The South could have chosen not to be assholes, but they couldn't help themselves".

> US Slavery as an institution was gradually on the way out before the civil war. Again a bloodthirsty mass movement was not willing to let time take its course. Slavery is wrong but murder is worse.

Can you link to some places I can read more about this?

He can have John Brown ... who was one of the very few actually violent abolitionists. Most were pacifists, especially the leadership.

Brown raised an army of, like, 30 men to attack slavery with. Planned partisan war basically, lost pretty quickly.

A place to start would be the 1807 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves. Of course this didn’t prevent slaves from being born in the USA nor did it prevent internal slave trade. But there was a non violent movement to end slavery through gradual means, which had already worked in northern states. A good book on Gradualism is “The Scorpions Sting”[1]. To be clear I’m not arguing for an innocent south as that’s not supported by historical documents. I am going to maintain my position that the US population has been bloodthirsty from its founding to the modern day (albeit thankfully less so now than in the past).

[1]https://books.google.co.kr/books/about/The_Scorpion_s_Sting_...

The commonwealth gaining independence was a function of the U.S. existing.

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