Your head is deeply planted in the sand yet you tell people who are offended to do "do research and learn the facts".
It's extremely ironic.
Here are the facts, go ahead and disprove them with your deep historical knowledge.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/outlo...e-south-seceded/2011/01/03/ABHr6jD_story.html
You think feeling apathy towards ugly symbols like the swastika and the Confederate flag makes you tough skinned? No, it only shows ignorance and a lack of empathy towards your fellow man.
The author also makes a few historical revisions in order to make his point. Slavery was a doomed institution. While it would have taken much longer to end, slavery's days were over and I'd be surprised if it would have survived into the 1900's if the Civil War did not occur.
While the South desired territorial expansion into Cuba and Latin America, it wasn't going to happen, plain and simple. Spain had no desire to sell Cuba to the United States despite numerous offers and the rest of the country had no desire to go on a war of conquest into the rest of Mexico and Latin America. And if the South managed to get into Mexico the way they did with Texas, they would have only been able to settle the northern sparsely populated areas where they are too dry and arid to support slavery while the locals in the more fertile lands would not have allowed slavery to occur in their areas due to Mexico abolishing slavery in 1829. And I highly doubt that the South had the military capability of conquering places like Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and British colonies of the Caribbean to expand slavery there. Southern expansionist dreams were nothing but a pipe dream.
There is also certain facts to take into account. Slavery was effectively contained. There was no way slavery could expand beyond the 15 states that allowed it. The only other states that could have accepted slavery, Kansas (not a state but chose to become a free territory) and California, opted to become free states. Add in Oregon, which became a state in 1859 (and never would have been allowed as a slave state) and the political balance of power tipped towards the free states. The South was outnumbered. And they could not expand into other territories like the New Mexico Territory, Indian Territory, and Utah Territory because the geography could not support slavery, they would have been admitted as free states, thus making the situation even worse for the South. I firmly believe that the South recognized this and it was the biggest reason why they were very set on secession because politically, they were doomed. If they remained in the Union, slavery would have eventually been banned because slavery had no opportunities to expand.
On a side note, I also think that one of the Border States like Virginia or Maryland would have eventually banned slavery. A combination of the transportation of slaves from that region of the South to more deeper southern areas in the former Confederacy, a slightly more evolved aristocracy (slave owners like Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, etc. were rather uncomfortable about the fact that they owned slaves), and their more constant contact with their Northern brethren made the area ripe for eventual change.
Take into account the Southern economy. It was very dependent on resource draining cash crops like cotton. By the time the Civil War started, cotton had already worn out the soil in the more old Southern states like Virginia and the Carolinas and most cotton production was being concentrated in the newer Southern states like Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Eventually, the soil in those states would have worn out as well. The eventual downturn in agriculture would have made slavery less viable.
And then there are global developments to take into account. By the 1880's the Western Hemisphere abolished slavery including in nation-states where slavery was even worse like Cuba and Brazil. Enforcement of the ban on the Atlantic slave trade by the British made things difficult for slavery to continue, growing slave populations made the areas ripe for rebellion if the situation were not dealt with, etc.
Now it brings up an interesting question which is the better outcome: slavery ending in 1865 through a devastating war that killed hundreds of thousands and destroyed the South or slavery ending peacefully but at the cost of it enduring decades. It's a question that is rather unanswerable because both are rather horrible outcomes.
