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It made good press for the secessionists to screech about how the abolitionists wanted blacks to live among them as equals and (gasp) go to school with their daughters -- and worse, marry them.
Apparently, no one asked where the mulattoes, high yellas, quadroons and octoroons came from. Classic "do as I say, not as I do" elitist doodoo.
And, for whomever posted that bit, New Orleans lived by a totally different code.
Ole
I agree. I agree with what Shane said up above too.
"elitist doodoo"...... "and something about honor and integrity".
I'm having a hard time keeping up with all these responses. How do you all do it?
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.
Wrong. That's a gross misuse of that source. There are a number of problems with the slave narratives, and no honest historian would ever make the claim you just made.
One has to understand exactly what one is reading when one reads the WPA Slave Narratives, and one has to understand their very great limitations.
"Interviews were conducted in seventeen states during the years 1936-1938 with approximately two thousand ex-slaves. Two-thirds of those interviewed were age fifteen or younger at emancipation; almost all of the remainder were in their late teens or twenties in 1865. Members of this group, therefore, were over eighty years of age when interviewed and more than seventy years removed from the events they were discussing. The ex-slaves were not randomly selected for interviewing; they were either volunteers or previously known to the interviewer. Therefore, the interviews cannot be used with statistical precision. The interviewers were, for the most part, untrained, but they were given general instructions which included not influencing the viewpoing of the informant, withholding their own view of slavery, and recording all stories 'as nearly word-for-word as is possible,' but to avoid dialect spelling where it would confuse the reader. The interviews were recorded in the interviewer's handwriting, not via taperecorder, and later were typewritten." [Thomas F. Soapes, "The Federal Writers' Project Slave Interviews: Useful Data or Misleading Source," _Oral History Review,_ 1977, p. 33]
There are, of course, several problems associated with these interviews:
"The first and most important question one must raise about these sources is whether the interview situation was conducive to the accurate communication and recording of what the informants remembered of slavery. In this regard, it should be noted that black interviewers were virtually excluded from the WPA staffs in all of the southern states except Virginia, Louisiana, and Florida. Discrimination in employment led to a distortion of information; during the 1930s caste etiquette generally impeded honest communication between southern blacks and whites. ... Traditionally, any white man who is not 'with' black folks is inevitably viewed as being 'against' them. Anyone who doubts this should read the essay by William R. Ferris, Jr., on the problems he encountered while collecting oral lore in Mississippi in 1968. During his interviewing Ferris found that
"'It was not possible to maintain rapport with both Whites and Blacks in the same community, for the confidence and cooperation of each was based on their belief that I was 'with them' in my convictions about racial taboos of Delta society. Thus when I was 'presented' to Blacks by a white member of the community, the informants regarded me as a member of the white caste and therefore limited their lore to non-controversial topics. Blacks rarely speak openly about their society with Whites because of their vulnerability as an oppressed minority. ... As the group in power, Whites can afford to openly express their thoughts about Blacks, whereas the latter conceal their feelings toward Whites as a means of self-preservation.'" [John W. Blassingame, "Using the Testimony of Ex-Slaves: Approaches and Problems," _The Journal of Southern History,_ Vol XLI, No. 4, November, 1975, pp. 481-482]
Prof. Blassingame continues, "Since many of the former slaves still resided in the same area as their masters' descendants and were dependent on whites to help them obtain their old-age pensions, they were naturally guarded (and often misleading) in their responses to certain questions. Frequently the white interviewers were closely identified with the ancien régime; on occasion they were the grandsons of the blacks' former masters." [Ibid., p. 482]
The answers cannot be separated from the racial climate of the times. There was tremendous pressure to give the "right" answers. Indeed, there are cases where the interviewers actually refused to accept the "wrong" answers and tried to ask leading questions to get the ex-slaves to say something nice about their time in slavery.
"A Georgia interviewer, for example, was disturbed by the responses of Nancy Boudry to her questions:
"'Nancy's recollections of plantation days were colored to a somber hue by overwork, childbearing, poor food, and long working hours. "'Master was a hard taskmaster,' said Nancy. "'I had to work hard, plow and go and split wood jus' like a man. Sometimes dey whup me. Dey whup me bad, pull de cloes off down to de wais'--my master did it, our folks din' have overseer.'
"'Nancy, wasn't your mistress kind to you?'
"'Mistis was sorta kin' to me, sometimes. But dey only give me meat and bread, didn' give me nothin' good--I ain' gwine tell no story.'
"'But the children had a good time, didn't they? They played games?'
"'Maybe dey did play ring games, I never had no time to see what games my chillun play, I work so hard.'" [Ibid., pp. 482-483]
"Many of the WPA interviewers consistently referred to their informants as darkeys, ******s, aunteys, mammies, and uncles. Reminiscent as these terms were of rigid plantation etiquette, they were not calculated to engender the trust of the blacks. Rather than being sensitive the white interviewers failed to demonstrate respect for the blacks, ignored cues indicating a tendency toward ingratiation, and repeatedly refused to correct the informants' belief that the interviewer was trying to help them obtain the coveted pension. Not only did most of the whites lack empathy with the former slaves, they often phrased their questions in ways which indicated the kinds of answers they wanted." [Ibid., p. 483]
And this was by far not the only weakness found in the interviews. There were cases of deliberate distortions made by the local WPA editors in southern states, deliberately editing out references to harsh treatment of slaves by masters.
"A second weakness of the WPA interviews is that many of them are not verbatim accounts. The informants' stories were often edited or revised before they were typed and listed as official records. Even when the former slave's views are purportedly typed in his own words, the interview may have been 'doctored,' certain portions deleted without any indication in the typescript, and his language altered. ... The best evidence on the alteration of interviews appears in the words of Roscoe E. Lewis and a Georgia interviewer, J. Ralph Jones. In 1936 and 1937 Jones conducted five interviews which were returned to the state office of the WPA. Three of the five transcribed by the state office are virtually identical to the copies that Jones retained. The other two were significantly reduced in length and seriously distorted.
"Jones's interviews with Rias Body and Washington B. Allen were edited to delete references to cruel punishments, blacks serving in the Union Army, runaways, and blacks voting during Reconstruction. Jones had two interviews with W. B. Allen, and the second one is recorded in practically identical words in his record and the WPA typescript. The WPA typescript of the first interview, however, lists Allen's date and place of birth incorrectly and does not include 1,700 words which appear in Jones's record of the interview. About half of the section excluded from the WPA typescript referred to slave traders, the religious life of the slaves, the tricks they played on the patrollers, and the songs they sang. While the typescript refers to the kind treatment Allen received from his owners, Jones's records show that he spent a great deal of time talking about the hard work and cruel floggings characteristic of the plantation. The WPA transcript gives the impression that Allen spoke in dialect, using such words as 'fetched,' 'de,' 'dis,' 'chilluns,' and 'fokes.' But in his records Jones observed that Allen 'uses excellent English. ... '
"J. Ralph Jones's experience was not unique. The same kinds of distortions appear in the typescripts of the Virginia WPA." [Ibid., pp. 484-485]
As already brought up, the ex-slaves were very young when they were freed, and the interviews were conducted over 70 years after the events. Additionally, these former slaves as a group were most probably not representative of slaves in the United States. These are other factors that distort the picture one sees from the interviews.
"A third factor which led to distortion of the WPA interviews was the average age of the informants; two-thirds of them were at least eighty years old when they were interviewed. And, since only 16 percent of the informants had been fifteen years or older when the Civil War began, an overwhelming majority could only describe how slavery appeared to a black child. Because all of the blacks were at least seventy-two years removed from slavery there was no sense of immediacy in their responses; all too often they recalled very little of the cruelty of bondage. A good way of determining the impact of age on the responses of former slaves is to compare the WPA interviews with the hundreds conducted by northern journalists, soldiers, missionaries, and teachers during and immediately after the Civil War. These informants were still close to bondage, and consequently they remembered far more of the details of slavery than the WPA respondents. ... Since the average life expectancy of a slave born in 1850 was less than fifty years, those who lived until the 1930s might have survived because they received better treatment than most slaves. Taken at face value, there seems to have been a bias in many states toward the inclusion of the most obsequious former slaves. This is especially true when most of the informants had spent all their lives in the same locale as their former master's plantation. Since the least satisfied and most adventuresome of the former slaves might have migrated to northern states or cities after the Civil War, the WPA informants may have been atypical of antebellum slaves. Geographically, the WPA collection is also a biased sample. Although 90,266 of the South's 3,953,760 slaves (23 percent) lived in Virginia, Missouri, Maryland, Delaware, and Kentucky in 1860, only 155 blacks from those states were included among the 2,194 published interviews (7 percent of the total). Consequently, the upper South (and especially the border states) is underrepresented. On the other hand, while Arkansas and Texas had only 293,681 or 7 percent of southern slaves in 1860, the 985 black informants in these states constituted 45 percent of all former slaves interviewed by the WPA." [Ibid., pp. 486-487]
If one reads the South Carolina interviews of former slaves at face value, one would see virtually no mistreatment. This changes, however, for former South Carolina slaves who had moved to another state. "It is significant, for example, that former South Carolina slaves who were interviewed in Georgia had a far different view of bondage than those who were interviewed in South Carolina." [Ibid., pp. 489-490]
And if one reads what was recorded by black interviewers, one gets a very distinctly different view:
"The former slaves who talked to black interviewers presented an entirely different portrait of their treatment from what they told white interviewers. Black scholars at Hampton Institute, Fisk University, and Southern University conducted approximately nine hundred interviews with ex-slaves between 1929 and 1938. The interviews they received run directly counter to the South Carolina image of planter paternalism. More important, none of the volumes of interviews conducted by whites reveal as much about the internal dynamics of slave life as these 882 accounts. The informants talked much more freely to black than white interviewers about miscegenation, hatred of whites, courtship, marriage and family customs, cruel punishments, separation of families, child labor, black resistance to whites, and their admiration of Nat Turner." [Ibid., p. 489]
So one can easily see there are many problems associated with relying on the WPA Slave Narratives to give an accurate picture of slavery, including deliberate deception on the part of the white editors in the southern states.
"Uncritical use of the interviews will lead almost inevitably to a simplistic and distorted view of the plantation as a paternalistic institution where the chief feature of life was mutual love and respect between masters and slaves." [Ibid., p. 490]
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Originally Posted by Hanny
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.
Completely and totally wrong. Stampp's work has stood the test of time and continues to hold up as one of the most accurate works on slavery ever done.
Other good sources include the works of Ira Berlin and David Brion Davis, all of whom confirm Stampp's work.
The Peculiar Instituion was written (1956) as a direct antithesis to the earlier works such as American Negro Slavery which painted a flowers and song vision of slavery - which I am not.
What I am saying, popular or not, is that after the ACW, after the reconstruction years, there were relationships that existed between human beings...relationships that sprang from the sorry state of slavery, relationships that endured through war and reconstruction...and from my POV, relationships that recognized the responsibility of one human to another.
Anecdotal evidence is used in all methods of study. It can be counted in empirical studies. It has relevance.
I think given the wealth of evidence that is easily found if you wish to see it...IO John's ancestor was in all probablity sincere.
So how many of the several hundred thousand slaveowners were freeing their slaves in their wills, and were they freeing all of them or just a selected few? How many of the four million or so slaves living in 1860 would have been freed this way in your opinion? Were there more slaves being freed by their masters in, say, Virginia in the 1850s, or more slaves being whipped, sold South, etc.? (To help you out, VA was a net exporter of slaves in the 1850s, profitting handsomely from the rising prices for slaves, particularly prime field hands, that were driven by the Cotton expansion in the Deep South and the high slave death rates, higher than the slave birth rates, in certain counties of LA and SC.)
I have seen the evidence you are speaking of, as well as other evidence you have not presented. I acknowledge that it did sometimes happen, that there were "kind masters". My objection is to your characterization of it as a "wealth" of such actions, when I see it as a poverty of them. Unless you put it into perspective against the actions of the whole population, individual wills and tales of kindness will simply be isolated incidents that do nothing to settle the issue.
When people argue from isolated quotes and events about a widespread issue, it always reminds me of the "Willie Horton" campaign against Dukakis when he ran for President. Al Gore's people thought that one up. The Republican strategists noted that it was highly effective in the Democratic primaries for Gore against Dukakis (it was actually about the only thing Gore did against Dukakis that moved the poll meter), so the Republicans adopted it as their own for the regular election campaign. It was highly effective for them as well.
But the truth is that the "Willie Horton" incident, however horrible, was far more an example of an unusual and extreme event than of the average under Dukakis policy. Republican gleefully waved it about as often and loudly as possible to put Dukakis on the defensive and get voters against him. It was a good political tactic; it did not represent the overall situation in Massachusetts very well at all. The Republicans knew this, and did not care because they were trying to win an election. The
point of presenting individual wills and letters on masters freeing slaves or being "concerned" for them is much the same, to try to sway public opinion about slavery by emotional argument, showing probably exceptional behavior and implying it was the average. It is not an attempt to analyze how the average slaveowner actually felt, and cannot/should not be accepted as such.
Ozark Iron John may have had ancestors who felt compassionate about their slaves and tried to care for them. I hope that he did. But if the average slaveowner in the South had truly been trying to put the best interests of their slaves to the fore in a forthright manner and was intent on freeing the slaves, slavery would have been in the process of disappearing in the 1850s. Southerners would not have been demanding the expansion of it into new territory, advocating the reopening of the Atlantic Slave Trade to get more slaves, or pushing for the acquisition of Cuba, Mexico, and Central America as new slave territories. Slave sales and prices would not have been booming. Aggitation to enforce the Fugitive Slave Laws would not have been tearing the nation apart.
So if you want to push this point, put it in perspective for us. Show us the freeing of slaves against the selling of them, the abuses in the plantations against the acts of kindness, the viciousness of the slave trader and the overseer against the concern and fine treatment of the "good" masters. Let us see the parts of the problem revealed one against the other. Do not simply point to isolated incidents and claim the rest of the situation should be minimized.
The Peculiar Instituion was written (1956) as a direct antithesis to the earlier works such as American Negro Slavery which painted a flowers and song vision of slavery - which I am not.
What I am saying, popular or not, is that after the ACW, after the reconstruction years, there were relationships that existed between human beings...relationships that sprang from the sorry state of slavery, relationships that endured through war and reconstruction...and from my POV, relationships that recognized the responsibility of one human to another.
Texas2nd
Relationships between people always exist, but they are not always what we think they are.
If you'd like to see how relationships in the deep South grew/changed/mutated over the 100 years after secession, here is one look at the situation you might want to check: Let Them Eat Promises: The Politics of Hunger in America. by N. Kotz, DoubleDay (January 1969), ISBN-10: 0385055781, ISBN-13: 978-0385055789
I read that somewhere around 1972, so you'll only find it used or in a library. I think it was reprinted in about 1984 by Prentice-Hall, and perhaps again since then.
It is a study of the early 1960s Kennedy struggle with the South on how control of Federal food surpluses was used to control black populations (also white, but particularly black). It focuses on Mississippi because the Kennedys fought the battle there, but also because Senators Stennis and Eastland, and Representative Whitten, of Mississippi controlled the programs through the Congressional Committees they chaired. (Note: the situation was just as bad in other states, like GA, but the Kennedy's badly needed the support of Russell of GA in Congress, so they took their shot at MS. Note also that Eastland considered himself first and foremost a cotton planter, and Whitten was also from that background.)
Essentially, the food was cut off when the planters needed workers, and reinstated when the work was done and they didn't want to pay them anymore. Pretty good deal for the planters.
Is that part of the relationship you are talking about? I doubt very much that it is what you are referring to, but it is part of the whole and cannot be left out.
Note also that Senator Stennis rose to prominence in MS on murder convictions he obtained of 3 black men that were overturned by the US Supreme Court in Brown v. Mississippi (1936) that banned the use of evidence obtained by torture. The torture included floggings of the suspects, and Stennis was aware of the methods used. Is this also part of the relationships among people you are talking about and proud of? Is this the POV you were talking about? I doubt very much that it is what you are referring to, but it is part of the whole and cannot be left out.
I don't think you all are catching my drift. I'm not an advocate for slavery. It was an awful thing. It was bad for just about everybody involved. I'm not even too sure that it was good for them blue-bloods that owned all them slaves. It certainly didn't work out too well for 'em in Hati.
My people didn't own too many slaves. 12 or 15 is about all and they weren't "exploiting 'em" either. They was all living and working together. Most definetly my paternal ancestor "owned" the land and property, but that didn't mean he didn't get his hands dirty. He worked hard. In the fields and in the mill. He didn't set up on the porch sippin' Mint Julips. There just wasn't that kind of wealth here at that time.
The bone I've got to chew is with them Southern Aristocrats that started the whole thing. They hyped it up and made it like it was sooo good. But it weren't. It may have been good for them, or some of them, but for the vast majority of US, it wasn't good at all.
Do you all know about Fort Pulaski? Savannaha, Georgia. April 1862. Southern Aristocrats. Blue-Bloods. Fire Eaters. Cowards.
I growed up out here in the west folks. My heros were Travis & Crockett and General Anthony McAuliffe. Them scumbags at Fort Pulaski just rolled over and played dead. I ain't got no respect for 'em at all.
Last edited by Ozark Iron John; 05-11-2007 at 09:45 AM.
Originally Posted by trice
???
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.
I must have mistaken this part of your posts intent then,
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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?
for it was that i was primarily directing a comparison to. I mean you do know the census data for northern states shows that the ages of males in the prime of life shows they are under represented, because they had been sold of pre emancipation date set for them, and the pop distribution of many nortthern states all showed this as the norm, leaving an anbalnced negrop pop base behind, that without the menas of finacial support of thoat segement of the family unit, ment lower survivabilty for those left behind rigtht?, while its not present in the regions you claim it to exist< so if your going to post opion that is contary to the facts, im game to point out those you do for you.
But for your information the break up of negro family structure by sale of family members is a myth, has been show to be a myth for several decades, ever since computers were used to compile the sale of human property and work out the numbers/ages/sex status etc, and Fogel who poierd the work won Nobel prize for impericaly answering questiosn that anecdotal evidence had been used by one side or the other to support there point of view, Of course some familys were broken up, as the records show, but the scale is fantiscly statistcly small, 234 on average under 14 sold out of state per annum, with a 190,000 orphans in the same age group, means thatjust 1 in 810 orphans sale would acount vfor the entire interegional sale of children. UB Philps and other Southern commentators who had argued this from anecdotal sources were thus proved right, Olmstead/Helper/Bancroft etc were proven wrong and all the examples of slave sales breaking up mthe family unit had been put into statitical perspective. There simply was no such thing on a meaningful measurable scale.
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Originally Posted by trice
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.
Hard to swallow when the evidence it unplatable you mean?. 95% of the population carried on as before when there was no longer white males to force them to remain, thats from your own figures for 65, use the numbers of 63 and its 99%.
the prime field hand was the most under represented group of runaways, (7% of total, artisans/craftsman 80%, who were often hired out of plantation and thus had more abuility to escape)) he had no skills to be self suffiecent should he make it away, so im unsure your starting from a point of any acuracy.
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Originally Posted by trice
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.
Well you need to recall the distribution of the 180k, thats the number in April 65, and includes more neutral states former slaves than it does secesionsist states negros, and if you look back to 64 or 63 the number falls dramaticly as the Union had yet to gain the former CSA slaves into sevice. Which was not vol btw. So the 180 is made up A total of 178,892 Negroes officially served in the Union Army, of whom 134,111 were from slave states, with some 93,346 of these from seceded states, so your 94k from a pop of 3.5 million is less than Union desertertions, less than the number who joined the Uk to leqave the US the Colonies, and is as a % of the pop what again?. Goto Nov of 64 and your close to 20k short of that number in federal service.
General Orders No. 17, from the Department of the South headquarters at Hilton Head, South Carolina, stipulated:
[A]ll able-bodied male negroes between the ages of eighteen and fifty within the military lines of the Department of the South who are not, on the day of the date of this order, regularly and permanently employed in the quartermaster and commissary departments, or as the private servants of officers, within the allowance made by the Army Regulations, are hereby drafted into the military service of the United States, to serve as non-commissioned officers and soldiers in the various regiments and brigades now organized, and in process of being organized, by Brig. Gen. Rufus Saxton, specially authorized to raise such troops by orders of the War Department.
After this order had failed to produce the desired results, the following amended order was issued:
In view of the necessities of the military service, the want of recruits to complete the unfilled regiments in this department, the great numbers of unemployed colored men and deserters hiding about to avoid labor or service, and in consideration of the large bounties now paid to volunteers by the Government, General Orders, No. 17, dated headquarters Department of the South, Hilton Head, S.C., March 6, 1863, is hereby amended to read as follows:
All able-bodied colored men between the ages of eighteen and fifty, within the military lines of the Department of the South, who have had an opportunity to enlist voluntarily and refused to do so, shall be drafted into the military service of the United States....
The owners or superintendents of plantations, and all other persons throughout the department not in the military service, are hereby authorized and required to arrest and deliver to the local provost-marshal of the nearest military post all deserters in their employ or loitering about their plantations, and if it be necessary for a guard to make the arrest, it shall be the duty of such person or persons knowing of the whereabouts of any deserter, or person by common reports called a deserter, to report the fact to the nearest military commander, and also to render him all assistance in his power to cause the arrest. Any person found guilty of violating this section shall be severely punished.
These orders adequately account for a large majority of the Black men who bore arms against their former masters, without whom Lincoln declared that he would have to "abandon the war in three weeks." In a 26 February 1864 dispatch from Huntsville, Alabama, General John A. Logan wrote that "a major of colored troops is here with his party capturing negroes, with or without their consent.... [T]hey are being conscripted." On 1 September 1864, Captain Frederick Martin reported from New Berne, North Carolina, "The negroes will not go voluntarily, so I am obliged to force them.... I expect to get a large lot to-morrow."(9) To this report, General Innis N. Palmer added:
The matter of collecting the colored men for laborers has been one of some difficulty, but I hope to send up a respectable force. The matter has been fairly explained to the contrabands, and they have been treated with the utmost consideration, but they will not go willingly. Now, I take it that the state of the country needs their services, and that if they will not go willingly they must be forced to go, and I propose to take all I can find who are in no permanent employment and send them up. I am aware that this may be considered a harsh measure, but at such a time we must not stop at trifles.
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Originally Posted by trice
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 polpulation of escaped slaves.
Yes this is true, in fact no major union force ever moved through the major slave pop regions, but the regions it did move through saw the former slaves associate themselves to the Union force, who had the only nutrional means to provide for them, and were late war, there to make them free and no longer work the land for the CSA and under the rules of war obliged to provide for them, especialy since theuy had just by the mere prsecence of a large force depleted the region from sustaining life, let alone the effects of intentional destruction of livestock etc.
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Originally Posted by trice
*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.
Well this is the unplatable bit i mentioned, by wars end the North had aquired around 95k of former CSA negros slaves into service, from a population of 3.5 million, thats rather a small %, perhaps mil age is a better indicator though (CSA slaves 10-49age group =1088,000, free blacks border states 37,000, free blacks CSA 37,000 free northern) less than the number of slaves who left the colonies in the AWI for freedom promised to them by the UK, from a pop base a fraction of the 1860 one. Or another way to look at it, only a half of the 18k were from the CSA states, and half of them only served from the beggining of 65.
so the *some* you speak off was 90%ish of males of mil age, and 95% of total population who carried on doing what they did and ignored the white folks. The *many* was at wars end around 95k, and considerable less in earlier years, and is only noticible when a Union force is present, and *many others* finding women and children being the only ones holding them to the land simply stayed, when there was no longer any pratcible means to enforce them to do so.
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Originally Posted by trice
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.
All what? all you did was show that 95% carried on in the same manner, when there was no white males to force them to do so.
it takes more than opinion to discredit a thing, now if you actually have some substative evidence then please provide it as for your own numbers you have not done that which you claim, rather the opoiste in fact!.
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Ozark Iron John
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.
We can put this inter breeding to bed to be right now, current genitic studies show the extent of caucasion genitic contribution to the afro american negro, its vanishingly insignificant and thats with a over a century of intr realtionships post war. Thats the macro picture.
Rural mulattoes in 1860 made up 10% of the rural pop, Urban Mulattoes made up 20% of the urban pop, but rural pop was 90% of all population, the actual number of mix bloods was surpising small, since any one ofspring ment that it to was mullattoe, it rose from 7.7% to 10.4% in a century simply shows that it was under re populating itslef.
its easy to see a mixed parent ofspring and wonder how prevalent this is, but statisticly its not very prevalent at all, afro americans have about the same genitic make up of caucasion genes as humans do to monkeys, its that small.
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Ozark Iron John
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.
The US laws says the women who bear children become slaves. The probable white on blacks producing ofspring in the south was under 1% of all births using availble census data, and it was ilegal top do it btw, and the social stigma of it in the planation cirles means they were less likly to be the ones doing it, negro prosititutes numbers in southern cities pre war are almost non existant, they numbers of poor white prostitutes was considerable, showing what was in demand, ie not negros.
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Ozark Iron John
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.
Certainly thats one line of argument, in fact the freedmans B also had the same worry and comliled existing data from northern blacks, its here, and well worth looking at in depth.http://www.civilwarhome.com/commissionreportchapt3.htm
Quote:
Ozark Iron John
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?
Well thats a good question!, my parents best friends daughter married an Iranian national, and the this of course caused some problems, not on colour basis, but a cultural one more often than not. sadly it ended with divorce, and the children taken to iran without the mothers consent, and a huge issue of custody etc.
__________________ "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
Cash
Wrong. That's a gross misuse of that source. There are a number of problems with the slave narratives, and no honest historian would ever make the claim you just made.
I see i tread, im dishonest because i recommend the slave narratives to you, because they unlike you set out to illustarate a balanced pespective, as a source that does what you claim no reputable historian does, any historian who disagrees with you is also unreptable i take it then?.
You seem to have forgotten that the salve naratives is used in the USA and other countries to educate pupils on the conditions of slavery,( http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/literature/winter.html ) sure there are problems with any data, but it does quantify former slaves opinions, and they do not agree with you and your claims, so instead you attempt to show the data used in education is wrong. says a lot about you and very little about the conditions of slavery, dont like the data, change it so you do like it, wonderful aproach to statistical inpretation.
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Cash
Completely and totally wrong. Stampp's work has stood the test of time and continues to hold up as one of the most accurate works on slavery ever done.
There you go again with absolutes!. I mention your using a book to support that which its contects do not support, and you return with im dishonest and unreputable, im thinking your in a bad mood, other threads show you to be better than that, so ill hang around untill that side of you surfaces again.
Any work done before the advent of computers and modern statistical methods is outdated and error ridden, and any conclusion based on faulty data are equally unsound is what i was driving at. Sure he was spot on on a number of things, the profitability of slavery for instance, (prevailing wisdom had been that slavery was unprofitable for a considerable period, and that whites had slaves for social reasons rather than economic ones) he was right but did not quite know how to meaure it, Fogel did that in the 70s and won Nobel prize for empitrcaly answering questions we had used ancedotal acounts to surmise. Just as stmp never fully gave the pecuniary incentive offered by slave oweners because he lacked the statatistcs to evaluate it and its effects, again Fogel did so and won Nobel prize for bringing this aspect of slavery into the equation, while stampp leaves it largely out, no Noble prize for stampp in all this, but his work does contain many accurate statement and is a valubale contribution to understaning the instition of slavery, your just mis representing it, its really that simple.
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Cash
Other good sources include the works of Ira Berlin and David Brion Davis, all of whom confirm Stampp's work.
Agree on Berlin and Davis being worth while books to own, so is Ransom and others, What none of them flat out say is what you implied because unlike you they dont deal in absolutes.
David Brion Davis
"the origin of slavery, like the origin of liberty and property was entirely outside the social contract. when any man, by fault or act, forfieted his life to another, he could not complain of injustice if his punishment was postponed by his being enslaved.If the hardship of bondaage should at any time outweigh the value of life, he could commit suicide by resisting his matser and recieving tyhe death which he had all along deserved"
taken out of context, as you have done with stampp work, you could argue that Davies was pro slavery.
stampp cant answer this, while more modern works can and do. http://www.historycooperative.org/jo...39.2/rael.html
Questions:
In which region were free African Americans most likely to claim some property? In which was the free black population least likely?
In which region were free African Americans nearly as likely as white Americans to hold property? In which were they the least likely?
What general conclusions might we draw from these data about free black life in the three regions of the United States?
Based on this information, draw some conjectures about what life might have been like for free black Northerners.
Table 4: Mean Property Claimed by White and Free Black People, 1860
Region White Free black Black as % of White
North $583 $92 16%
Upper South $938 $30 3%
Lower South $1,388 $206 15%
Nation $751 $85 11%
stampp thought "The elegantly dressed slaves, who promenaded the streets of Southern town and cities on Sundays, the men in fine linens and bright waistcoats, the women in full petticoats and silk gowns, were usually the domestic servants of wealth planters or townspeople. Butlers, coachmen, maids and valets had to uphold the prestige of their White families." was to do with something not related to slave pecuniary benifits through the reward system for instance, as something he got wrong, because he had very little idea of the rewards of salvery when he wrote, but he sure had a good handle on the punishments side of things, re****ing in a rathwer biased intrpetation of the instition as a whole. stampp had not quite moved away from the social aspect of slave holding onto the economic value they contributed to white society, because he wrote in time when such data was not yet collated and intpretated.
__________________ "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
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