How Southern Incompetence Freed the Slaves

  One hundred and fifty years ago this week the first shot of the Civil War was fired at Fort Sumter.
  This is the beginning of a long sesquicentennial commemoration, so there will be plenty of time to hash over the various historical controversies in the four years to come. I would like to make just one observation at this point.
  The modern world should be grateful for the brief existence of the Southern Confederacy. Without the Confederacy, and its complete and utter political and military incompetency, the institution of slavery would probably never have been abolished. On the contrary, the slave holding states were probably just one southern-dominated Supreme Court decision away from extending the logic of the Dred Scott case in such a way that slavery would be the law of the land, south and north. The South, prior to succession, had at its disposal all the political muscle that was required to protect its interests.Only by abandoning these institutions to form the Confederate states did the South deliver up to the abolitionists the necessary political power and raw numbers that would be required to make the legislative and constitutional changes necessary to abolish slavery forever.
  Then, having put all its eggs into the lone basket of southern sovereignty, the South proceeded to wreck that as well by pursuing a military strategy that was out of sync with its resources as well as with its actual political objectives.
  The end of slavery in this nation stands as something of a miracle. The Constitution, as written by the Founding Fathers, is rigged to make the ending of the institution all but impossible. The successive political crises of the 19th century leading up to Lincoln's election make clear that the South was not prepared to give an inch on slavery and the North had neither the political muscle nor the focused will to make a sustained frontal assault on slavery, as it existed, in the South.
  Yet, in just a few years, slavery, as a legal institution, was gone.
  Only the South itself had the power to end slavery. Through its own pathetic incompetence, that's exactly what it did.