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MrRodgers -> RE: A short history of racism, slavery and hypocrosy in the US. (3/2/2014 5:23:37 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: jlf1961
quote:
ORIGINAL: MrRodgers
A few things.
One, as I posted earlier on another post, Maine and Mass. and Vermont as of the 1790 census...had no slaves. Vermont had 16 listed but it was later determined that they were free blacks incorrectly listed as slaves.
Two, in many cases Indians treated other Indians as badly as the white man, he just didn't have gunpowder. Including, translation of the Sioux to most Indians was...'the enemy.' The Sioux acted like the Borg of Star Trek lore...'You WILL be assimilated, resistance is futile.' Many were enslaved.
Three, as for how the poor 'free' blacks were treated in the north, what you say is generally true but treated white poor little better (ask the Irish) and all were still free to 'earn' a change in their economic status. Also, no blacks in the north were human chattel (after the 14th amend.) and considered property while the slaves-as-collateral you speak of in bank loans, almost all of those slaves were chattel in the south and it was southern banking that almost, not entirely dominated in that use as human collateral.
Yes, Lincoln didn't go to war originally to 'free the slave' but the south went to war first to keep him...calling it 'their way of life.' Tactically, the Emanc. proc. had to wait for a military that could back it up and until Antietam...couldn't.
Furthermore, you are correct about American hypocrisy as to its revolutionary creed but from the 15th to the 19th cent. the rest of the world dominated and by a large margin, the use of human as slaves the last sale of which was Saudi Arabia in 1969. Plus, the American revolution was the first and necessarily violent attempt at removing from the world such despotic luxuries.
As evidence to such a creed being new and requiring what Franklin said (for future generations) I submit that going back to millennium before Christ...ALL societies sanctioned slavery where one could argue that in the introduction of money and the whole concept of 'private property' from Sumerians, and the Akkadians a 'way-of-life' and thus any such large culture change was going to be a violent social, political surgery for its removal and legal prohibition, would be...rank with hypocrisies.
Uh the 14th amendment was passed and adopted in 1868, the war ended in 1865, and that little thing about chattel was well in effect until 1860. Thus your argument on that point is not valid.
And you may really want to do some looking into things known as "investment banks" and where they were located. Banking in the south was primarily small local banks with very limited resources, a direct result of an agricultural based economy. Banks do not grow in an agricultural economy. They basically hold their own. Money is deposited when the crops are sold, the money is then pulled out when it comes time to plant.
Thus the southern plantation owners had to look to the north for capital investments (loans.)
Little known economic/banking fact, defaulted loans can loans can and do close banks. I think there was a recent incident in modern banking history involving home lending, large national banks, and a few going down the shitter because the mortgages exceeded assets, oh wait, mortgages are assets. So a large national bank that owns a lot of worthless assets not making money in the form of interest, what happens to said bank?
So, where are these small southern banks going to get the large amounts of cash to loan an plantation owner to expand his operation? They could make the loan, then sell the paper to a much larger bank, which were predominantly in the north.
Nor did you address the fact that northern shipping tycoons made much of their money in the slave trade, even after it was completely outlawed in the US, since transporting slaves to foreign colonies could not be checked. Little loop hole there.
Now, do you see what I am pointing at? In the question of slavery, the north was by far not as innocent as people want to believe. There is more than enough guilt in slavery and the slave trade to go around.
And once more, I have to ask, if slavery was so damn important to the Confederate states, why did the President of the Confederacy and the majority of Confederate members of the legislature seriously consider dissolving slavery just to get the British Empire and other European countries to recognize them as a legitimate country?
That kind of defeats the purpose if you left the union to keep slaves, does it not?
Now when the southern congressman and senators introduced a bill to ban slavery similar to the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 passed by parliament in the the British Empire.
That bill which the northern states fought against made no sense what so ever.
Slavery was ended (good thing) under the law, and southern slave owners where compensated financially for the loss of assets (evil thing.) No the northern position was that slavery was to end, immediately with no compensation for slave owners.
Yep, perfectly reasonable and fair for northern states to vote that legislation down, they could not even act like they gave a fuck about the financial welfare of their fellow Americans, could they?
I mean, really, everybody fully realized the southern agricultural economy would not last forever. Both in the north and in the south. the south needed to expand industrial business, meaning mills to take raw cotton and turn it into cloth. They needed money to do that, money tied up in slaves.
The south had two markets for its cotton, Northern mills and mills in Great Britain. The mills in New England pretty much were the only game in town for cotton growers, unless of course they could build their own mills.
Now, please, Mr Rodgers, what would have happened to the northern cotton mill stranglehold on American cloth production if the southern plantation owners were compensated financially for the loss of their slaves and did something radical, like build mills to process cotton in the south?
See any possible reason for the north to block that southern legislation to free slaves?
I quit a masters program in history. I researched the civil war and the preceding years up one side and down the other. Including motions to free slaves by the southern states, that were blocked by northern states, you know the ones that supported free blacks? It became a passion, not because I believe in slavery, but because I felt the civil war could have been prevented.
Northern politicians blocked everything that would have freed slaves and prevented an economic collapse in the south. The majority of people in the south did not own slaves, but if the economy collapsed with the freeing of slaves and the wealthy losing everything, they would have suffered as well.
Basically, wealthy abolitionists wanted the slaves freed, at the expense of south.
After the civil war, and the southern economy in ruins, hundreds of thousands destitute, what did these caring christian abolitionists do, came down south in droves and bought up everything that could at prices so low as to be downright criminal.
During reconstruction, the south did not have very much in the way of representation in Washington, not only did the 14th go through as one of the reconstruction amendments, but other laws were passed, laws that did nothing but rub salt in the wounds of the south.
You do know that Robert E. Lee was offered the command of the Northern Armies? He did not turn it down because he supported slavery, in fact he was passionately opposed to it.
He did not turn it down because of southern nationalism, he planned to sit out the eventual war at his wife's plantation of Arlington (now a national cemetery, started by the union who were burying war dead on the property while the Lee family was still in residence.)
He turned it down because "I cannot take up a sword against my native Virginia."
When he was offered the command of the Army of Northern Virginia, he accepted with reluctance, pledging only to defend Virginia and its citizens, not to actually fight a war of aggression against the North. He took that route only after he realized that the only way to get the North to the negotiating table was to threaten Washington DC.
Not really the philosophy of a southern nationalist bent on the destruction of the Union. He didnt even fight the war with the best interests of the confederacy in his mind, his thoughts were simply the preservation of Virginia.
Two times before Gettysburg, he lead his army to a point where Washington DC could be taken and held until the north sued for peace, and was blocked not by a better force, but because he did not have enough assets to push the advantage, a large chunk of his army was defending Richmond.
Then there was a move late in the war, Jubal Early's corp marched toward Washington DC from the south, stopping on the hills overlooking a largely defenseless union Capital (Grant had taken most of the troops to fight Lee) and for a few reasons he turned his column and did not press the advantage.
True his troops were tired and hungry, as well as poorly equipped at that late point in the war, he still could have taken the capital with barely a fight.
He turned his column because he saw no reason to push his advantage. It would have bought Lee time to regroup and set up a defensive line, since Grant would have had to turn north to deal with a captured Washington.
And yes, there was a possibility the North would have sued for peace.
Early believed that the north would punish Virginia worse at a later date than if Lee surrendered his force.
And the north did indeed punish the south, just as clearly as they pushed the south into a corner.
To say that the north were ruthless capitalists...agreed. So what ? To say that the south needed northern investment, I somewhat agree but with the cotton gin and foreign investment do not forget that at one time 'cotton was king' with the big plantations and their bankers making good money.
Between 1774 and 1804, ALL of the northern states abolished slavery, but remained absolutely vital to the South. Plus historically, there was never anything to stop the south from building industry and cheaper with chattel slavery, just as the north did with cheap free labor but instead simply relied upon agriculture and letting their slaves do all of the work.
As for Early's advance on Washington, he was hung up for almost a day in one of the most important yet under-celebrated battles of the war that being of Monocacy Creek. (junction, 7/1864, the battle that saved Washington) Having held up Early, the union did reinforce Washington and any attempt to take on now much heavier fortifications might have produced at best a stalemate (Ricketts brought only 5000 of his VI Corp, equaling Early's remaining strength) and Grant could have easily dispatched the remaining 15,000 without endangering his siege on Richmond) and further destruction of a shrinking Conf. army.
Your OP was about US racism, slavery and hypocrisy. I replied with the fact that such issues have existed for arguably...7000 years. So I'll give a pass for a while on a concept merely 200-300 years old (modern) and the contortions still with us to rid at least part of the world of such social anomalies.
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