[lsc]

>The aims of the American War of Independence and the Civil War almost certainly could have been achieved without firing a shot.

Maybe? I mean, the war of independence is a little different... clearly, we were not a real threat to the British; we just needed to be seen to be resisting, without getting crushed, until the war with France heated up enough that the British couldn't spare the troops to keep us down. from that perspective? it was almost a minimal violence kind of war. The "Fabian strategy" - which only worked against an army as good at logistics as the British because they were also fighting a serious war with France at the time. Really, we needed to remain a threat, but except for proving that we could inflict such damage, one could argue that the actual violence wasn't super necessary.

The ACW, on the other hand, I... kinda don't think there was a peaceful resolution there. I mean, it wasn't like the southerners were arguing for a British style 'emancipation with compensation to the former owners' and the war was just haggling over the price. The Confederacy pretty much immediately rebelled after it was clear that we'd have an abolitionist-leaning president... long before any actual abolitionistic action was taken, long before it was clear that such action would be taken.

I kinda don't see how the ACW could have been avoided or made less violent. By advanced nation standards of the time, we were pretty far behind on the abolition schedule already, and while the slaughter of the ACW was shocking, so was slavery.

[walshemj]

The AWI could have been avoided the UK kept shooting its self in the foot if you avoid the AWI its interesting what happens does the USA take the same route Canada did?

If say the American colonies where given all the rights UK citizens under the same legal system had then Somerset v Stewart becomes interesting as that case outlawed chattel slavery in the UK in 1772.

[loggedinmyphone]

I don't think the South loved owning slaves as much as they found it an expedient economic model, which was less true in the North. So I believe they could have been moved by economic pressure. We can't know for sure, but we can say there's more than one way to skin a cat and if you can do it without getting blood on the walls so much the better.

[lsc]

>I don't think the South loved owning slaves as much as they found it an expedient economic model

The economic model is strong in some ways; the value of all the slaves in the south, as I understand it, was greater than the value of all the farmland in the south.

There are weaknesses in the economic model, too, though. Nobody is saying that the southern enlisted man was hesitant to fight, and few of the enlisted (as opposed to officers) owned slaves.

For that matter, your average enlisted southerner would probably have been significantly better off, economically speaking, without slavery, just because if you are trying to sell your own labor, it's significantly more difficult to do so when you are competing with literal slaves.

So while you can use the economic model to explain the behavior of the southern elite, the economic model does not explain why the average southerner fought.