this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2026
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Holy revisionist history!!
White abolitionists absolutely played a role in ending chattel slavery in the United States, not the least of which were John Brown, the 48ers, and others who were doing what they did for the goal of Abolition primarily.
The vast majority of northern politicians, generals, and soldiers, were engaged in the Civil war to preserve the Union, first and foremost. Abolition was a distant secondary concern for most of them.
Furthermore, Slaves weren't just sitting on their asses waiting to be freed by the benevolence of white people, they were agents of history all on their own. W.E.B. DuBois argued in Black Reconstruction in America that an underdiscussed turning point in the Civil War was when slaves engaged in one of the largest general strikes in American history. A strike which crippled the southern economy and thus its ability to sustain the war.
So yes, Slavery did end in very large part because the slaves revolted.
It's not revisionist at at all. In fact you partially agreed with me, that WHITE abolitionists were prime agents of ending slavery.
Slavery ended IN PART because the slaves resisted, but it's revisionist history to pretend that the enormous Civil War that killed millions of Americans, mostly white, didn't play the most major role in the end of slavery.
There wasn't a single American slave revolt that contributed substantially to the end of slavery. When Union armies started encroaching on Southern territory, slaves abandoned their posts, and headed to Northern lines, but it wasn't anything organized. DuBois characterized it as a General Strike, but it was really just the slaves taking advantage of the opportunity of a lifetime. There was no organized revolt, no General Strike, just individual motivation to escape while it was possible.
Sure, the Union Army was fighting to preserve the Union, but they were also well aware that the ONLY issue that was dividing the Union was slavery. Literally every Southern Constitution, and the Confederate Declaration of Independence made it very clear that their single issue was slavery. Without Slavery, there is no Civil War. And without the mostly white Union Army, the South would have continued with slavery.
Except I literally gave you an example of one...The massive general strike of slaves which crippled the southern economy
https://daily.jstor.org/did-black-rebellion-win-the-civil-war/
So even DuBois, who was the first to characterize the initial liberation of the slaves as a General Strike, acknowledged that the "General Strike" was preceded by the encroaching Union Army encouraging them. They were already essentially free. Walking off the plantation was just the slaves claiming their new status as free people.
A General Strike implies organization, and that wasn't strictly true. They didn't plan for it, set a date, etc. When the Army got close, and everybody knew the region was inevitably going to fall, they walked off the job. If the Northern Army hadn't shown up, would those slaves had done a General Strike on their own? Of course not, any "General Strike" was only as a result of the approaching army, and the recognition that the end was imminent anyway.
This wasn't a General Strike, it was just the end of slavery. It's like characterizing the closing of a company as a General Strike. It isn't a strike, and all the workers walked off the job, the factory just closed, and everybody lost their jobs.