No Need for War to Free the Slaves

Wartime governor of North Carolina, Zebulon Vance, questioning why a war was necessary to eradicate African slavery, pointed out what slave-trading New England had done with their slaves only a few decades earlier. Like the Pequot Indians who survived New England’s violent expansion, most were sold into slavery in the West Indies or Southern plantations -- and New England became known as the “free States.” The Pequot tribe has been compensated for these wrongs with a gambling casino.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
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Time, as Zeb Vance had thought from the beginning, would have shown ways for solving the intersectional discord. Time would have brought freedom to the slaves, which appeared to be the only benefit to come out of the civil war. Emancipation could have been achieved as quickly in peace as in war had the best thought of the government been focused in that direction, and in a manner much more orderly and beneficial to the Negro population. The former slaves were left stranded and virtually helpless for years.

They received no mule and forty acres, but crowded into the Southern cities when the plantations were wiped out. Certainly emancipation could have been attained by purchase at vastly less cost in money and without the irreparable sacrifice in young lives and maimed bodies in both the North and the South. The best thought in both sections aspired toward emancipation, but government initiative lagged.

He (Vance) would sometimes jibe at Massachusetts by telling how that State relieved herself of slavery. Massachusetts was like the old maid who was fond of garish jewelry but got religion, and exhorted young pretty women against wearing geegaws.

"Oh, girls," she said, "I used to wear ear rings and laces and furbelows like you, but I found they were dragging my immortal soul down to hell and I stripped off every one of them."

"What did you do with them," she was asked.

"Why," she said, I sold them to my little sister."

(Zeb Vance, Champion of Personal Freedom, Glenn Tucker, Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965, pp. 436-437)
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No Need for War to Free the Slaves