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What do you all have to say about Miscegenation? Race Mixing? The Brazilifaication of America?
Without a doubt, Southern Aristocrats did it. 19th Century New Orleans was reknowned for it's Quadroons, Octaroons, and High Yellow negress whores.
I'm not making any value judgments or statements about racial purity or the superiorty/inferioriaty of either any or the other. I'm just asking: How do you reckon the Southern Aristocrats felt about it? How do you reckon their mixed race kids felt about it? How do you feel about it? Is your family mixed race yet?
You seem very worried about this subject, Ozark. Everybody on the planet, regardless of their race, are human beings. If two human beings fall in love with one another, where's the harm?
Why do you need to know if 'your family mixed race yet' in order to discuss the past history of the subject? Why worry about the 'Brazilifaication of American' if you are not making any value judgments?
As for the past, how about this?
Quote:
The sexual abuse of slave women by white men also influenced many Union troops' views, though in complicated ways. Walking down the street in Washington, D.C., Pvt. Constant Hanks watched slave and free children playing and reflected, "you can see also the intervening shades, from white to black that would leave one to think that perhaps larger children have played together sometime." Lt. George Landrum was haunted by the sight of a young slave boy "as white as ever I was; light curly hair, blue eyes...not the first sign of the negro about him except in manner." The unfortunate little boy was about to be sold away from his mother by his master, who was also the father. To make matters worse, the boy was far from unusual. "There are many such here," Landrum continued. "I have seen them in every town we have come through, slaves as white as any white man can be" because they had been fathered by white masters whose complete control over their female slaves left the bondwomen vulnerable to exploitation.
From the book, What This Cruel War Was Over, by Chandra Manning.
Sounds like to me that Miscegenation was a big part of the Southern landscape, so apparently the Southern Aristocrats felt 'good' about it. Is this what you were hoping to learn?
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
...
And, for whomever posted that bit, New Orleans lived by a totally different code.
When the US bought/acquired this territory (Louisiana Purchase) there was a sizable population of free mixed-race people already in place. Treaty provisions of the acquisition required that those people and their descendants be free. These are the people often referred to as "Creole" in those parts, and "Creole" sometimes had a different meaning in the area (from LA over through Mobile) than it did in the rest of the South. In addition, many of the progeny of slaveowners with slaves and mixed-race mistresses seem to have been considered in this group, often after being freed by their masters.
If anyone doubts it, a search of the OR will find a letter or two on the subject. This is one of the arguments expressed in urging the authorities in Richmond to accept as soldiers a "Creole" unit in Mobile during the war -- which was rejected by the people in Richmond:
MOBILE, April 23, 1862.
Hon. GEORGE W. RANDOLPH,
Secretary of War:
SIR: I am well acquainted with G. Huggins Cleveland, who is anxious to raise a creole battalion or regiment. He is a man of character and much respected, and will do good service in any station. I, too, highly approve of his plan. I know the character of the population he proposes to enlist, and think they will render as efficient aid as any class we have. If the rules of the Department will permit it, I hope he will be accepted.
I am, yours, very respectfully,
E. S. DARGAN.
[Inclosure.]
MOBILE, ALA., April 23, 1862.
SIR: I can raise a battalion or regiment of creoles, who are mixed blooded; all of them free under the treaty with France by which Louisiana was acquired. They are mostly property-holders, owning slaves, and a peaceable, orderly class, and capable of doing good service. They are as true to the South as the pure white race. As yet none of them have gone to the war, but have been anxious to do so. If such a battalion or regiment can be received, I can raise it in a few days. Please let me know if such material will be accepted.
I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
G. HUGGINS CLEVELAND.
CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, WAR DEPARTMENT,
Richmond, Va., May 5, 1862.
Hon. E. S. DARGAN,
Mobile, Ala.:
SIR: Your letter of the 23d ultimo, recommending that authority be granted to G. H. Cleveland to raise a battalion or regiment of creoles, has been received. In reply I have the honor to inform you that the law does not permit the Department to accept any new corps.
Very respectfully, your obedient servant,
A. T. BLEDSOE,
Assistant Secretary of War.
What do you all have to say about Miscegenation? Race Mixing? The Brazilifaication of America?
Without a doubt, Southern Aristocrats did it. 19th Century New Orleans was reknowned for it's Quadroons, Octaroons and High Yellow negress whores.
I'm not making any value judgments or statements about racial purity or the superiority/inferioriaty of either any or the other. I'm just asking: How do you reckon the Southern Aristocrats felt about it? How do you reckon their mixed race kids felt about it? How do you feel about it? Is your family mixed race yet?
Interestingly enough, I normally never pay attention to these questions of yours. But since you bring them up, I'll take a look and see how I feel.
For myself, seven of my eight grandparents were born in Ireland, and the eighth was an English soldier on duty there. Great Grandmother had to move to Ireland when she married him (the local priests wouldn't perform the ceremony, and they ended up travelling halfway across the island to Dublin before they found one who would).
Three of my grandparents were born in Ireland, and the fourth in England. All moved here in the days before WWI. Here they met and married. Both my parents were born here, one in San Francisco, one in New York. My father can tell you about looking for jobs in the Depression when the "WASP only" in the ads meant not him, because he was "Irish Catholic" not "Anglo-Saxon Protestant". I do admit he had a leg up on black people because he had the "White" part in his favor, but then both of his parents had died by the time he was 11. Times were tough, he really needed any job he could find, and he has a pretty solid feel for what prejudice can be like from the bottom side, even if the worst of it was not directed at him. He raised me to reject the ideas you seem to be trying to get people to consider here.
Nowadays, I actually know a few people who have married people from other "races", although I see them all as human beings. Come to think of it, one of those is in my family, and the woman is an intelligent, good, wonderful person -- and the son of that union is a delightful child who makes me proud.
In addition, because I have had relatives in the military and West Point, I have met dozens of people of mixed race, or married to people of another race. One of the members of the wedding party of my older sister's wedding was a black man -- a top-notch soldier and graduate of USMA -- and a good friend and classmate of my brother-in-law. My other USMA brother-in-law had a brother who married someone of another race, and their kids seem just fine to me.
Last month, I was at an awards ceremony to honor my father at the West Point Society in Philadelphia. I didn't ask anyone, but thinking back a few of them might have been of mixed-race, one way or another. All looked like people worth knowing. General Shinseki, the retired Chief-of-Staff, was there to receive the Colin Powell award, and it was he who was pinning the ribbons and medals on Dad. He is an intelligent man, a fine soldier, a brilliant and effective public speaker, undoubtedly a brave man -- and a man any American should be proud to claim kinship with. IMHO.
I've known a few others through work and school over the years who inter-married or came from mixed-race families. Generally seem like good people to me.
So I guess I'd have to say I don't really care much about the issue.
Since you asked such questions, why do they concern you? What is the big deal in your mind over such things? I can't say they interest me much, but they clearly do you.
That is the 25% of the population who wrote and kept records!!
So if we read about a wealth of kind acts and find numerous wills with provisions for exslaves than it could be more the norm for the owners than you wish to admit.
I have personally seen 3 wills, 1 from Tennesee, one from East Texas and one from Alabama that deal with this. 2 were not family members.
I also re-iterate that there are many published sources that detail the same types of acts. Can list some if needed. They include historical perspectives with lots of references.
I am not claiming it was all flowers and song. It was a sad moment in our history but I do stand by my convictions that for the most part there was a symbiotic relationship between many owners and slaves. That is why it is not hard to believe that OI John's ancestor meant what he said.
Well, actually, far more than 25% of the white population could read and write in the South in those days, even though the general level of education was higher in the North than in the South or the West. (Even Lincoln noticed this in the 1850s, when he attended a trial in Cincinatti with high-powered Eastern lawyers handling the argument; he told a friend afterwards he was going back home and studying law to be ready for these big-time Easterners, because they were so good.)
You can, however, find letters in the papers in the South arguing that public education of the average Southern white "yeoman farmer" was a waste of money. After all, what need did they have to read and write? It wasn't the slaves who were writing that, and it wasn't the average white "yeoman farmer". It may not have been a majority opinion among the "Southern Aristocrats", but it is clear that some few of them felt that way.
Also, it appears to me we can document far more acts of cruelty and harsh treatment from the records that I have seen than we can "a wealth of kind acts". You are talking about things in ones and twos. There were four million slaves in 1860, and hundreds of thousands of slave owners, and well over a million in slave owning families. What percentage of them do you think were performing these "kind acts" for their slaves? Were the same people who performed the "kind acts" for a few slaves also selling other families apart, selling other slaves South as many in the Upper South did, working hands unmercifully, or treating them harshly?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Texas2nd
A little aside...If we can't look at individual experiences before and after the ACW then what are we doing here? I don't see one board here that deals strictly with facts and figures.
You cannot determine what the attitude of the whole population by a few isolated instances. Only a detailed study of a large variety of examples, using many sources, could give you any dim view of that -- and you would have to include acts that don't show in the type of documents you are considering. Someone was selling all those slaves that were working the plantations in the Deep South: where do you include them in your calculations?
If you want to show something about the attitude of the whole population, you need to do statistical studies. Just as I would prove nothing about overall attitudes among the gentry by showing you 2, 3, or 4 letters to newspapers against educating "yeoman farmers", producing a few wills that free slaves proves nothing about the attitudes of the whole population towards freeing slaves.
Odd use of race here, there is only one human race, the nearest other race of humns died out 30k years ago, the neanderthals.
Only members of the same race can procreate, so its best to remeber that, cats for instance, cross alion and atiger you get a liger or a tion, depending on which was the female, you still have a cat though.
__________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote."
Benjamin Franklin, 1759
Sez every reputable historian who has studied slavery. You might want to start with Kenneth Stampp's _The Peculiar Institution._
Regards,
Cash
Incorrect, as you must be aware off.
You might want to start with the slave Narartives, in which a federal study of post war attitudues of former slaves found over 70% were happier as slaves than now to be free.
You can then look at the pecuniary reward system of slavery, as a slave the average earings of a negro was higher than as a free man for over two decades post emancipation.
Stamps work is old, error ridden and not quoted much these days, as its not very reliable at all.
__________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote."
Benjamin Franklin, 1759
Also, it appears to me we can document far more acts of cruelty and harsh treatment from the records that I have seen than we can "a wealth of kind acts". You are talking about things in ones and twos. There were four million slaves in 1860, and hundreds of thousands of slave owners, and well over a million in slave owning families. What percentage of them do you think were performing these "kind acts" for their slaves? Were the same people who performed the "kind acts" for a few slaves also selling other families apart, selling other slaves South as many in the Upper South did, working hands unmercifully, or treating them harshly?
Oddly the facts do not support you, the number of negro families broken up through slale of familiy members was lower than white family break up through divorce, for instance, so your talking about a statistic unimportant number of break ups, the principle cuae of fmily break up was mortality, and the resultent infants being left on their own, in the North they were used as child labour in conditions far worse than southern, slavery.
All soceitys use reward/punishemets to get things done, slavery was no exception and the rewards far exceed the penaltys, 500-1000 per annum runaways from 4 million is less than the desertion rate for thye military, its a fantsticly small number, the number or slave revolts is also extremly small, and its because slavery holds up the confederacy it has to be removed as a war aim, because it was largely a willing slave population. Not that they wanted to be slaves, but they had laregely fair masters, just like most people the world over, they dont want to be free, they just want fair masters.
__________________ "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote."
Benjamin Franklin, 1759
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice Also, it appears to me we can document far more acts of cruelty and harsh treatment from the records that I have seen than we can "a wealth of kind acts". You are talking about things in ones and twos. There were four million slaves in 1860, and hundreds of thousands of slave owners, and well over a million in slave owning families. What percentage of them do you think were performing these "kind acts" for their slaves? Were the same people who performed the "kind acts" for a few slaves also selling other families apart, selling other slaves South as many in the Upper South did, working hands unmercifully, or treating them harshly?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hanny
Oddly the facts do not support you, the number of negro families broken up through slale of familiy members was lower than white family break up through divorce, for instance, so your talking about a statistic unimportant number of break ups, the principle cuae of fmily break up was mortality, and the resultent infants being left on their own, in the North they were used as child labour in conditions far worse than southern, slavery.
???
Since I wasn't talking about divorce, the causes of family breakups, or the fate of infants left on their own for any reason, I really don't know why you address this to me. It seems to have nothing to do with what I said.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hanny
All soceitys use reward/punishemets to get things done, slavery was no exception and the rewards far exceed the penaltys, 500-1000 per annum runaways from 4 million is less than the desertion rate for thye military, its a fantsticly small number, the number or slave revolts is also extremly small, and its because slavery holds up the confederacy it has to be removed as a war aim, because it was largely a willing slave population. Not that they wanted to be slaves, but they had laregely fair masters, just like most people the world over, they dont want to be free, they just want fair masters.
In practical terms, it is hard to swallow describing the slave population as "largely willing" to be slaves.
Practical difficulties prevented the effective escape of slaves. Successful runaways were rare in the Deep South, not because of nice masters, but because distance to sanctuary imposed great difficulties on successful escapes. Most of the problem was in the Upper South and Border States, not in places like South Carolina.
For the same reasons, the most common and feared escape was that of a "prime field hand", a young man in good condition, because he could handle the difficulties.
Truth is that some 179,000 military age black men served the Union as actual soldiers in the Union Army. Some number more served in the Union Navy. Most of these appear to have been escaped slaves.
Additional black men served the Union as laborers and camp servants, camp cooks and teamsters, and additional crowds of men, women, and children fled their masters at the first sign a Union army was close enough for them to reach. Again, these appear to have overwhelmingly been from the population of escaped slaves.
*Some* slaves appeared to willfully remain loyal to their masters when they had a choice. *Many* fled that life at great risk and hardship. *Many* others never had any realistic chance to make a choice, since they were in areas where no easy access to Union troops was possible.
All this casts grave doubt on those tales of just how common the willful acquiescence of the slaves was. If they all had access to guns and easy travel to free areas, you might have a point. But when they were unarmed, subject to swift physical punishment, and unable to travel openly and freely, your point is discredited and unproven.
Sounds like to me that Miscegenation was a big part of the Southern landscape, so apparently the Southern Aristocrats felt 'good' about it. Is this what you were hoping to learn?
I don't think I'm "worried" about it, UnionBlue. I am curious about it. I look around me today and I see the product of many mixed race couples. Mothers and Grandmothers with mixed race children. Oddly enough they are mostly white (whatever that means) women with the progeny of black (likewise) men and more often than not, they're alone. But that may just be the situation in the community in which I live. I don't know.
I think you are right about the Southern Aristocrats. I believe that many of them were eager to practice miscegenation. I reckon Massar and Young Massar both visited Miss Bessie's bedchamber at regular intervals on many plantations throughout the southland. What was the deal with their children? Were they slaves because their mother was a slave or free because their father was free? Its odd that back then it was more likely that white men bred with black women.
I think this was a hotly debated topic in the local grist mills and general stores. Much more so than slavery and the abolition there of. Middle Class whites were terribly afraid that the blacks were going to "get loose" and ravage their women. I think it was the Southern Aristocrats that convinced 'em that this would happen if slavery was abolished. I think that's why they fought. One of the reasons anyway.
I ain't trying to make a statement about white superiority or black inferiority or vice versa folks. I'm just trying to understand this melting pot I live in and prepare myself and my family for the future. I believe history repeats itself and those of us who can't learn from it, are doomed to it. I'm just trying to learn from it.
What would you all do if your daughter brought home a little mixed race grand baby?
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