Historians don’t usually do counterfactual history or predict the future, but we should wonder what would have happened if the Confederacy had won, if Lee had been successful. Despite all the states’ rights blather of the Confederacy, its constitution allowed no states’ rights on slavery. One clause barred any state from making a law “impairing the right of property in negro slaves.” Changing the constitution required two-thirds votes of the states; no easy task. Because the price of enslaved people was at an all-time high in 1860, slavery would have continued for decades or longer. In 1840
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