Slavery, would it have died out in the US without the war?

[johan_steele]

Aphillbilly;

I would agree that slaves got more respect before the war than after... but not by much. And that would have revolved around house slaves and Artisans.

You mention several nations where slavery existed... Of note slavery didn't end in Gaul, China or Persia... merely a shift in ownership to the counquerers. What of slavery that still exists today? THere doesn't seem to be any gradual shift going on there... where it exists today it has existed since biblical times. The UN hasn't had any effect in eliminating slavery... not that it's really tried.

You don't mention the fact that many Native American tribes were firm believers in the slave trade and made well by it by stealing whites, mexicans and other Indians and using them as slaves. It took the subjugation of the Native American culture as a whole to eliminate that practice. Something that was a far cry from peaceful.

As it was the elimination of slavery was fought tooth and nail. Note that it is a fact that several SC plantation owners killed all of their slaves rather than let them go free... A peaceful destruction of American slavery was just not an option unless some sort of massive and lengthy agricultural disaster had wrecked the cotton and tobacco industries.

Slavery was an accepted concept, in places it still is. People have to see something as either moraly wrong or financially destructive to want it removed as an institution. The South, in general, did not see it as either.. in fact go down to SC and look around a bit and you'll find people who would like a return to the pre 1865 status quo.

Some would say that the way Slavery was eliminated in the South was too gentle. Those are the "reperations" crowd. They just make me mad. I despise racists who accuse others of racism. As it is I firmly believe that it took the Civil War to remove Slavery, w/out it... when and how. If, through some act of God or the Devil, the CSA had won the Civil War is there really any evidence that the CSA govt would have taken steps to remove the institution of Slavery? I firmly believe they would have reopened the importation of slaves. Why emancipate cattle? That is how most slaves were viewed.

I try not to judge the men and women of another time. They have already been judged by God and who am I to second guess him. As it is men and women of another time should be judged by their peers from that time. Slavery was judged as wrong by many of the time in the rather violent abolition movement but there were those who were using reasoned argument to make inroads into the mindset of the educated classes. Would that have been enough to one day abolish slavery in the South or the rest of the US for that matter? I don't think so, simply put the more radical abolitionists like John Brown destroyed any chances of such a thing.

IOn other words I think John Brown and other radical abolitionists destroyed any chance of a peaseful end to slavery.

[unionblue]

Tommy,

Hello again and lurking in the shadows? The time has come to 'walk to the light' as it were and rejoin the fray. I look forward on your sources and comments about slavery in the present world, something I would be much interested in.

As for your observation that the North 'buggered up' slavery peacefully leaving and ending in the South, sorry, no sale. As for the idea that slaves were much better treated before the war than after and the idea that former slaves were used by Republicans to breed more hatred, I got some views on that one too.

http://www2.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/slavery.htm

Please view the diary of the slave owner on the above site and explain to me how this is in any way respectful. I can find plenty of sites with documentation to back it up that the respect a slave got from his master depended totally on the mood and feeling of his master, not by law, not by religion, not by custom, but on a man's whim. (Jeff Davis seems to be an exception and I am sure there were others who tried to be nice and have respect for their property, but it varied from place to place.) No thanks, I'd rather have the respect that comes with putting 'eagle buttons on my coat and cartridges in my pocket' than a man's whim.

And again, if anyone thinks that this system was on its way out by 1860 is not facing the economic facts nor the attitudes of the men who most benefited from the institution of slavery and the attitudes of the common people who did not.

Slavery made money for those who practiced it, and the panic of 1857 has been brought up to me more than once by those trying to compare slavery and wage-slaves, as the panic did not impact on the South and its ability to turn a profit during that time. Cotton and slave-run plantations made that profit happen. And you are going to give that up because you want respect?

As for Reconstruction and its aftermath, I am having a very hard time buying the story of everything going against the South in that era. Instead I see more hatred of the idea that blacks were finally free and a great fear of the loss of racial superiority by even poor whites, who at the very least could cling to the idea, although poor, they weren't slaves or black.

Why all the Jim Crow laws and lynchings and poll taxes the restrictions of blacks to vote? With this kind of attitude being displayed after the war, I see no chance of slavery being abolished in the South right before or during the war, no way in the world.

Now, that being said, those in the North need to take a big hit on this one area too. The North, under Lincoln and Sherman, strangely enough from my research with sites provided by Thea, had started down the right road to help former slaves on the way to freedom. But then the North sold blacks, and all the Northern soldiers who fought and died during the war, out.

Special order #15, giving ex-slaves 40 acres and a mule, was rescinded by President Johnson. A Presidential election results in trouble were smoothed over by an agreement to withdraw Federal protection from blacks and leave them out in the cold. Northern indifference and a desire to put the war behind the country, betrayed real reform. This in my opinion was a NATIONAL sin that all Americans must come to grips with and recognize.

And I must say, it is very uncomfortable for me to read this history and come to an honorable conclusion about it, as we live with its legacy even today. But again, that is what the discussion is all about, isn't it? Finding our way to the truth, even if its our truth and it isn't very pretty at times. Nor a truth which we can agree on. But the search is worth while.

Until that time,
Unionblue

Shane,

Clovis, King of The Franks (part of Gaul) fell in love with a slave. When he died his sons got rid of slavery.

You are right that slavery in China and Persia still exists, in fact, on the rise. As well as in countless other nations. Including here.


The thirteenth amendment to the U.S. constitution clearly states that: ''Neither slavery nor involuntary solitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.''

Imprisoning and enslaving a huge segment of the non-white, the poor, and the disenfranchised has a long history in America. It was a routine practice during the Reconstruction period into the 1950's and 1960's for poor people to be arrested on trumped up charges, ''dully convicted'' and remanded to prison labor camps, chain gangs, and sweat houses to work off their sentences.

Common charges used for this purpose were vagrancy, loitering, and drunk and disorderly. Poor women, walking home from their jobs or waiting for the bus, were habitually waylaid by police and sheriff's authorities and charged with ''solicitation for prostitution.''


Since the mid-1970's this trend of incarceration and the resulting enslavement, has reached epic proportions.


In 1975, local state, and federal government agencies spent 4 billion dollars on their prison infrastructure. By 1994 that figure had skyrocketed to $36 billion.


The federal government devotes a huge chunk of its budget to prison construction and maintenance and many states spend more money on their prison networks than they do on social programs and education combined.

Within the last ten to fifteen years, there is a concerted effort to harmonize and [in some instances] merge prison labor with the desires of business and the needs of production.

Currently prisoners turn out $10 billion worth of products, replacing over 500,000 workers from the main work force.

Yearly in the United States, as many as 50,000 people are brought to the country and enslaved. Most are forced to work as prostitutes [sex slaves] in private homes or public clubs, and laborers in sweat shops and on farms; or as servants in the homes of the affluent and the influential.

All this info was done 3 years ago so the numbers have risen of course.

For tons on the US prisons used as slave labor...just type in Slevery, US, Prison in your search engine


But that said...
China did abolish slavery in 1886.

Persia did free many of it's slaves. During the crusades, all the slaves had to do to go free was be circumcised and become Muslim.

YMOS
tommy

(Message edited by aphillbilly on September 11, 2003)

Neil,

"No thanks, I'd rather have the respect that comes with putting 'eagle buttons on my coat and cartridges in my pocket' than a man's whim. "

I had a chuckle when I read that. There is no more abhorrant institution of legalized slavery than to be drafted into the military.
Talk about subject to other man's whims.

Made to disregard and disgrace your religious beliefs.
Made to work.
Made to suffer physically and mentally.
Made to die and worse, to kill.
Told when to eat.
Told when to sleep.
Told when to go to the bathroom.
Told when to talk.
Told when to shut up.
Told when how to dress.
Told when to die.
The punishments for making a run for freedom are horrendous.
(During the CW the list of punishments devised by sadists for every infraction was appalling.)


...I can give a laundery list of men who had whims that caused untold numbers of people to labor, suffer and die. Haig pops into my mind. Or "Blood and Guts" Patton..."Our Blood and his guts."

If that ain't slavery, what is it? I have never seen any institution more subject to tyranny than the military.
None.

Still chuckling.

YMOS
tommy

[unionblue]

Tommy,

My friend, chuckle away. When a man volunteers to give up his freedom for the defense of what he holds dear, it is not an institution of slavery, but a sacrifice for his home, his family and his way of life.

And in no way was serving in the military a form of slavery. I had the option of getting out every three years at the end of my enlistments, but I felt I owed my country my service for all the freedoms I had while growing up.

Military service slavery? No, sorry, not even when a person is drafted can I think that way. Why? Because if you volunteered, you had to serve three years. When you were drafted, you only served two years.

And in my own humble opinion, you are a slave if you consider yourself one in your own mind. I never did the entire 20 years I served in the Army.

It wasn't tyranny to me, Tommy, it was service.

Until that time,

Unionblue

[unionblue]

Friends,

Found an excellent web site on a subject that definitely needs looking at when we consider slavery a wholly 'Southern' sin.

Please look at the following site and read the chapter from the book, "An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans," by Child. This is NOT a slap at Southerners and a great source document of the time on Northern attitudes about race.

http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/abo...beslmca5t.html

Enjoy the read,
Unionblue

I'm not alone in the belief it is slavery.

"Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents, and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war, in which the folly or the wickedness of Government may engage it? Under what concealment has this power lain hidden, which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous and baleful aspect, to trample down and destroy the dearest rights of personal liberty? Sir, I almost disdain to go to quotations and references to prove that such an abominable doctrine had no foundation in the Constitution of the country. It is enough to know that the instrument was intended as the basis of a free government, and that the power contended for is incompatible with any notion of personal liberty. An attempt to maintain this doctrine upon the provisions of the Constitution is an exercise of perverse ingenuity to extract slavery from the substance of a free government. It is an attempt to show, by proof and argument, that we ourselves are subjects of despotism, and that we have a right to chains and bondage, firmly secured to us and our children, by the provisions of our government."

Who said it? You should know him.....Daniel Webster

[unionblue]

Tommy,

I know ol' Daniel well and enjoy him very much. Where did you pull the above quote from, if I can ask, and what was Daniel talking about at the time?

As for others who share your belief that somehow military service is a form of slavery, I knew many of those folks during the Vietnam war and the other conflicts afterwards, right up until Gulf War I. You all are entitled to your opinion and the last time I checked, you don't even have to join if you don't want.

Now, just an aside you mind, I don't have problems with a draft, if the cause or emergency called for one. But to call the military a form of slavery is in my minds eye, is quite a stretch. Do you give up freedom? Do you become a team and face and work towards a common goal? Yes. But it sure makes you appreciate the country you are living in.

Take care,
Unionblue

Neil,
You know Lydia Child was part of the abolitionist movement but seperated herself from them. Her reasoning was that by attacking the south then you were not helping get rid of slavery but entrenching it.
That you cannot convert if you alienate.

Which was odd because just 10? years later she was praising John Brown's to the heavens and worshipping his actions.. Hard to figure.....

But her book made her very unpopular in the north. The point was you was not supposed to critise the north but just focus on the south.

YMOS
tommy

Neil,
lol...Sorry but I don't need to be made a slave as a method of teaching me appreciation of my country. Thanks but no thanks lol. Let me have liberty and privacy instead. That I'd appreciate.
Besides, that "common goal" may not be as common as it should be.
Webster was talking about the War of 1812. As you know, that was when the North almost seceded.

"...it rests on the assumption that your kids belong to the state. If we buy that assumption then it is for the state - not for parents, the community, the religious institutions or teachers - to decide who shall have what values and who shall do what work, when, where and how in our society. That assumption isn't a new one. The Nazis thought it was a great idea."

President Reagan on the Draft


(Message edited by aphillbilly on September 11, 2003)