The Revolution was not inevitable; there were compromises floated that could have led to a very different result, including one resembling the Irish Home Rule Act that would have given the American colonies autonomy in all issues except foreign policy and the Navigation Acts. The 1619 Project crowd believes this would have been an improvement. Slavery in North America would have been abolished, not after the Civil War, but by an act of Parliament in 1833.
Two questions are pertinent here:
- Would North American slavery have been included in the 1833 abolition act?
- In what ways, if any, would America look different today?
As to the first question, the abolition of slavery in the British Empire only became possible when the value of sugar production in the West Indies declined dramatically, and when the Reform Act of 1832 precluded plantation owners from buying seats in Parliament. The value of North American slavery by that time had gone through the roof as the result of the vast growth of the cotton cloth industry. Mill owners and workers in Lancashire depended on it, as did traders and bankers in London and Liverpool. The vested interests poised against abolition would thus have been far more powerful. As it was, the payments made to the West Indian plantation owners represented about 40 percent of the annual budget at the time. It is completely unrealistic to assume that abolition and compensation for Southern planters would have been a viable solution in 1833. It is far more likely that slavery would have survived elsewhere in the British Empire as a result of the inability to deal with the American problem.
As to the second question, there would have been no “United States,” so it is safe to assume that the individual states would have enjoyed more autonomy, and efforts to create the single market in America would have gone much more slowly. Economic growth would have been slower. The frontier would not have been populated as quickly. At some point, America would have become effectively independent, as Canada did, but it would look more like Canada than it does today.
For better and worse.