Has slavery ever been abolished nonviolently? Is it humane to consider violent abolishments as cruel alternatives?
When Britian ended slavery they paid every slave owner a set amount for each slave they had. I don’t know much more about it, but I didn’t read there was violence due to it.
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If one believes in nonviolence as a general principle but concedes it for self defense; there are a number of pacifistic moral philosophies which would still resist slavery. As slavery itself can be seen as an ongoing act of violence.
Though depending on scale this borders on can war/non-pacifistic revolution ever be moral? Which is a tough nugget to crack in moral philosophy.
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This got picked up on a lot faster than I thought, and wasn’t prepared to follow this train of thought. The reason is because I’m starting to, hmmm, “teach” American history, which is really me trying to make age-appropriate sense of what happened.
We look at money and I explain what each person did that was horrible. But when I compare Lincoln to the other money-fathers, it is a different level of disappointment. I mean, sure, suspending civil rights and potentially making things worst than they needed, but I don’t know, I tend to think “enslaved others” is an attribute for a special kind of monster.
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