The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Civil War - NYTimes.com - 0 views
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...-slave-trade-and-the-civil-war
Civil War US history slavery international effects
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What if the Confederacy had won recognition from Britain in 1862 and survived the war? His rather frightening answer was that the three great centers of slavery in the Americas — the American South, Cuba and Brazil — plus the smaller plantation economy of Dutch Suriname, would not have abolished slavery when they did.
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In all likelihood, without a Union victory, slavery would have remained a central institution underpinning global economic growth until possibly the present day.
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there is no doubt that the federal government effectively protected transatlantic slave traders in the half-century before 1861 and that the outbreak of the Civil War just as effectively removed that protection.
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American administrations were often stocked with Southerners in key positions like secretary of state, secretary of the navy and president, and they refused to take serious action against the foreign slave trade. Thus they tacitly allowed the Stars and Stripes to be used as a cover. In the absence of a treaty the British were reluctant to interfere with American shipping; only American naval ships could stop this practice, and even when they acted officers would usually detain a ship only if slaves were on board (thus ships heading to Africa, even if they were obviously slavers, were let go).
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The use of the American flag ended only after the Civil War began. In 1862, with Southern politicians finally gone from national politics, the United States at last signed a treaty with the British providing for mutual right of search on the high seas, an equipment clause and joint Anglo-American joint courts (called Courts of Mixed Commission) for adjudicating detentions. The fact that those courts never heard a single case detracts not at all from their impact.