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I just wanted to poke in a bit of fact in. Not all Southern individuals owned slaves. A lot of individuals were just slaveless like a good many of those in the North. I feel it is most unfair, to paint with a broad brush that the entire South was nothing but whites owning black slaves. I believe PBS "History Detectives" had a piece where they had found blacks owned black slaves and they had just as much trouble keeping them owned as their white peers. And, in the North--there were those who owned slaves as well, peppered here and there.
Anyway--I am not keen on paying/buying out anybody. We've done that in other countries and they still don't behave. Send them aid--they don't aid the people the aid is targeted for.
Not only a bit of fact, M.E. A healthy dose of history. Thank you.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
I just wanted to poke in a bit of fact in. Not all Southern individuals owned slaves. A lot of individuals were just slaveless like a good many of those in the North. I feel it is most unfair, to paint with a broad brush that the entire South was nothing but whites owning black slaves. I believe PBS "History Detectives" had a piece where they had found blacks owned black slaves and they had just as much trouble keeping them owned as their white peers. And, in the North--there were those who owned slaves as well, peppered here and there.
Anyway--I am not keen on paying/buying out anybody. We've done that in other countries and they still don't behave. Send them aid--they don't aid the people the aid is targeted for.
Just some thoughts.
Sincerely,
M.E. Wolf
33% of the families in the confederate states owned slaves. Most of the African-Americans who owned slaves owned family members to prevent them from being kidnapped by slave catchers, sold to another state, or forced to leave the state when they were freed. The vast majority of so-called "blacks" who owned slaves for profit were actually mulatto sons of white planters who considered themselves to be white.
33% of the families in the confederate states owned slaves...
Regards,
Cash
Who is the source and how do they arrive at 33%?
__________________ POWER & MONEY
"Your New-York bankers and merchants are shrewd people, but I never gave them credit for so much sagacity as when they took the Government Loan. It was not merely patriotism, it was a high stroke of policy. It has saved the Government, and what they will regard as equally important, saved them from a great financial disaster."
The director of the 1860 Census stated that -- for all fifteen slave states -- 25% of the families owned slaves.
If you only look at the 11 that formed the Confederacy, you'll probably be about that 33% figure. The percentage in the Border States was much lower, naturally enough, because there were fewer slaves there in proportion to the population.
If you only look at the Deep South, the seven states that initially seceded, the figure will rise above that 33%. Again this is hardly surprising: there was a much higher percentage of blacks-to-whites in those states.
Do you really have a big problem with any of that?
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
The use of "familes" as accounted in the census and the method employed by the website (slaveowners divided by "families") gives a rather skewed result as to understanding how many people in the South that had a direct interest in slaves.
Using the method on the website...the following sample would be counted as 1 "family" and 0 slaveowners.
It is actually 13 adult males and 0 slaveowners:
1860 Census
Mobile, Mobile County, Alabama
Ward 1 (page 35) Dwelling Place No.345 Family No.286 "Garner House Hotel" (written on side)
MF Ruter 38M-Keeper Boarding House H Ruter 37F John Ruter 11M Eliza Ruter 7F Miles Ruter 6M Annie Ruter 1F Wm B Smith 35M Clerk TM Smith 21M Laborer Railroad Frank McNulty 40M Conductor Railroad JM Brickell 25M " " FA Kooker 38M " " EP Watkins 35M " " S Campbell 30M Clerk Saml Green 32M Laborer Railroad C Johnson 30M Gentleman N Burns 30M " I Halmoken 30M Conductor Railroad CC Briff 35M Laborer Railroad
These persons do not appear to have any property in slaves. The Ruter family is from Indiana.
*
How many boarding houses do you think there are across the South?
__________________ POWER & MONEY
"Your New-York bankers and merchants are shrewd people, but I never gave them credit for so much sagacity as when they took the Government Loan. It was not merely patriotism, it was a high stroke of policy. It has saved the Government, and what they will regard as equally important, saved them from a great financial disaster."
New York Times, 27 September 1861
Last edited by Battalion : 03-07-2008 at 07:47 PM.
We know that compensated emancipation for Union slaveholding states was proposed by Lincoln in 1862 and considered in Congress.
What do you suppose was the purpose of this offer? A reward for remaining loyal?
ole
Ole,
I wouldn't be that cynical. Of course, Lincoln made the offer for tactical reasons. But I think it would be a mistake to dismiss it as mere tactics. I think the idea resonated deeply with him. As odd and impractical as the idea seems to us nowadays, compensated emancipation and colonization as a solution to slavery (and to the presence of blacks, free and slave, in the US) surfaced repeatedly before the War. In his way, Lincoln was merely pursuing the dream of his idol, Henry Clay.
I wouldn't be that cynical. Of course, Lincoln made the offer for tactical reasons. But I think it would be a mistake to dismiss it as mere tactics. I think the idea resonated deeply with him. As odd and impractical as the idea seems to us nowadays, compensated emancipation and colonization as a solution to slavery (and to the presence of blacks, free and slave, in the US) surfaced repeatedly before the War. In his way, Lincoln was merely pursuing the dream of his idol, Henry Clay.
Agreed. I haven't thought much on that offer and was thinking out loud. I do find it strange, however, that the offer was to have been made to loyal slave-holding states -- not to Virginia, not to Tennessee, not to Arkansas.
Perhaps he was thinking that, if Kentucky might agree to compensated emancipation, perhaps Tennessee would reconsider? And then maybe Virginia and North Carolina? Mostly, tempers had gotten too high by then for any sort of rational thinking. But it is interesting to contemplate his reasoning.
Agree that he wanted them free and he wanted them out -- at that time. Will also note that, were I a merchant in, say, Chicago or Minneapolis or Pittsburgh, I'd scream bloody murder at the government spending money on buying slaves and relocating them. (Read: they made their bed.)
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
I just wanted to poke in a bit of fact in. Not all Southern individuals owned slaves. A lot of individuals were just slaveless like a good many of those in the North. I feel it is most unfair, to paint with a broad brush that the entire South was nothing but whites owning black slaves.
It is understood, by me at least, that the war was not one between the "north" and the "south." It is the reason many of us rarely use "south" when "Confederacy" works better. There is a difference.
The Confederacy was the slave-owning south. Not the whole south. That a whole bunch of non-owners got rooked into shooting at a whole bunch of other non-owners is the unfortunate shorthand we get into. But it remains that it was the slave-owners that pushed the edge too far. So, if you sometimes feel put-upon because you are included, don't worry about it, no one really includes the entire south in their rants.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
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