Anne Pemberton's scenario of the south seceding and the north
transforming itself into a refuge for escaped slaves rests on an
erroneous characterization of the north.  Certainly she is correct on the
matter of the obnoxiousness of the fugitive slave laws -- especially the
more sweeping 1850 version -- to many in the north.  The rioting in
Boston that surrounded the rendition of the fugitive Anthony Burns is
testimony to the extremes of northern outrage.  On the other hand, one
needs to recall just how radical and dangerous the abolitionists were
considered by other northerners.  Anti-abolition mobs _murdered_ people
-- like the printer Elijah Lovejoy.  Northerners were also racist -- glad
that slavery and large African-American populations lived at a distance.
They would not have welcomed black migrants -- legal or illegal -- who
would have competed with northern white workers for jobs.

To carry the point beyond the civil war, C. Vann Woodward's _Strange
Career of Jim Crow_ details the persistence of northern racism as one of
most significant factors in shaping segregation.

As for the original point about the potential of slavery's "natural"
death, it is important to recall that in the decade prior to the civil
war, the supply of slaves was in decline (hence the call by some
southerner agitators on the eve of the war for a re-opening of the slave
trade -- I say _agitators_ because it was undoubtedly understood that
such a call would go nowhere; even Brazil had ended its slave trade by
that point).  Yet slavery would have lasted perhaps longer in the US
south than in Brazil (slavery ended 1888) because, unlike Brazil, the US
south had no mechanisms for manumitting slaves or for fostering a free
colored population.

David Kiracofe
College of Charleston

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