Blog Post 4
Ben H. Winter’s “Underground Airlines” explores the alternative history of what would’ve occurred if Abraham Lincoln was assassinated before taking his place in office, which would consequently prevent the Civil War from taking place. Without the Civil War, America would be riddled with slavery in this reality. Although this alternate reality is highly believable in a sense of how things would play out with the absence of Abraham Lincoln. However, the actions of the Hard Four don’t fully align with the feelings of the Southern states in the past. To understand the true feelings of the Southern states, one must understand the origin of the Civil War, which was rooted in the strong disagreements between the Northern states and the Southern states. Citizens in the Southern states did not appreciate the hostility of anti-slaveholding states since they had to work with them to put certain laws into place (Finkelman). For example, Southern states wanted to ensure that they would have the right to travel to Northern states with their slaves without having to worry about retrieving them if they were able to run away during their journey in the North. In addition to Southerners’ dislike of having to work with Northern states to solidify their rights of holding slaves, they actively censored popular antislavery novels in their states as well as attempting to ban them in Northern states. Therefore, it is implausible that the Hard Four would willingly work with Northern states to enable them to ban slavery in their Northern states even if they agreed to make slavery legal in the Southern states. Instead, it is more plausible that they’d push for slavery to become legal in Northern states as well.
Slavery, the Constitution, and the Origins of the Civil War.: EBSCOhost. web.p.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=ba20412a-a850-421e-8989-8e57490c8855%40redis. Accessed 26 Sept. 2022.
