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With all due respect, you have the facts of the Dred Scott cases all bollixed up. You are wrong on the dates and the order of events, wrong on what courts decided. Please stop making claims that absolutely cannot be backed up.
Here is a section of the chronology you can find at the Washington University in St. Louis website (http://library.wustl.edu/vlib/dredscott/chronology.html). I used the italics to highlight certain parts for you. Please use it to correct the many mistakes in what you have said so far.
1846
Dred and Harriet Scott sue Mrs. Emerson for their freedom in the St. Louis Circuit Court. 1847 The Circuit Court rules in favor of Mrs. Emerson, dismissing the Scotts' case but allowing the Scotts to refile their suit. 1850 The jury in a second trial decides that the Scotts deserve to be free, based on their years of residence in the non-slave territories of Wisconsin and Illinois. 1852
Mrs. Emerson, not wanting to lose such valuable property, appeals the decision to the Missouri Supreme Court. Lawyers on both sides agree that from now on appeals will be based on Dred's case alone, with findings applied equally to Harriet. The state Supreme Court overrules the Circuit Court decision and returns Scott to slavery. 1853-54
Scott, supported by lawyers who opposed slavery, files suit in the U.S. Federal Court in St. Louis. The defendant in this case is Mrs. Emerson's brother, John Sanford, who has assumed responsibility for John Emerson's estate. As a New York resident and technically beyond the jurisdiction of the state court, Scott's lawyers can only file a suit against Sanford in the federal judicial system. Again the court rules against Scott. 1856-1857
Scott and his lawyers appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Scott v. Sanford the Court states that Scott should remain a slave, that as a slave he is not a citizen of the U.S. and thus not eligible to bring suit in a federal court, and that as a slave he is personal property and thus has never been free. The court further declares unconstitutional the provision in the Missouri Compromise that permitted Congress to prohibit slavery in the territories. In fact, the compromise is already under assault as a coalition of political leaders-some slaveholders, others westerners who resent the federal government's ability to dictate the terms of statehood-claim that territorial residents should be able to determine on what terms they enter the union. The decision in Scott v. Sanford greatly alarms the antislavery movement and intensifies the growing division of opinion within the United State. The newly-formed Republican Party, which opposes the expansion of slavery, vigorously criticizes the decision and the court. 1857
Mrs. Emerson remarries. Since her new husband opposes slavery, she returns Dred Scott and his family to the Blow family. The Blows give the Scotts their freedom.
How can your question "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?"
not have been correctly answered?, your point is very clear you want to know the ratio or absolute number of emncipations through the death of the owner, makeing slaves free from deed of will. You will have to help me out here if that not the question you asked and i answered, what is the question if its not that?.
No, that is not what I was asking for.
The whole point of the ongoing discussion was that 1) masters cared for their slaves 2) an indication of masters who cared for their slaves were freeing them in their wills 3) some large proportion of the slave masters were "good" or "kind" or "nice" or what-have-you. Single examples were being presented as if they concluded the matter. I was pointing out how such evidence rarely proves a matter about a large group, because you have no idea if it represents the norm or the exception unless you do a rigorous examination of the facts.
So 1 or 2 or 3 wills freeing slaves does not prove the matter. It never could unless you took a large number of wills of slave-owners and saw what they did with their slaves upon their death. If you can tell me that 10 or 20 or 30 percent of the slaveowner wills freed slaves, we might make a start. If you can say that they freed all their slaves or only a few, that has an impact (did they "care" only for the fate of a few or for all?)
Please note: Your approach seems to address something important to you. It does nothing at all for the discussion that was underway when you jumped in. You are talking about oranges when I asked a question about apples. If you think differently, simply take what you said, apply it in a clear fashion, and give us the answer (or your approximation of the answer) to my question.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hanny
Is this the obtuse bit?, since emnacipation through deed by will existed to provide freedom as per Biblical law for emncipation of those held in bondage,it quickly becaame a statute law in the US from its earliest conception, it had no design to end slavery as an instituition, but to follow scripture and allow manumision of tghe condition by any individual who wished to do so. So the answer to your question is that in 1860 the number of slaves emancipated by deed of will would be in proprtion to the number of slave owners who died, which is statasticly higher in the war years of course, and produce in all probabilty the same ration of further emancipations, in other words the number of slaves made free by the death of there owners in the war could be adduced in general terms by looking at the % of slave holders average number of slaves owned, out of taoal CSA losses giving an indication of order of magntitude of slaves made free.
Again, this has nothing to do with the discussion I was involved in.
We are all friends of course, a few harsh words and a sulk before bedtime is about as bad as it could get right?, i guess you could get a finger ache, maybe a paper cut or spill your coffee, and at the best we all could read something intresting, or amusing, or new to each and increase our understanding or see a viewpoint we may not otherwise have, not a bad way to spend your time.
You're right Hanny. Welcome back to the board.
Terry
__________________ "In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed. There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one." Abraham Lincoln - August 18, 1864 Speech to the 164th Ohio Regiment
Do you understand that, in the Dred Scott Case, Chief Justice Taney and the Supreme Court threw out the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787? Declared that the US Congress had no power to make a territory or state free, or to prevent a master from bringing his slave into any part of the land? As a result, the conditions and laws that made Illinois and the Wisconsin Territory free under US law were null and void? That his residence in those two areas was the sole basis for Dred Scott's claim to freedom?
If you are, then you understand that the effect of Dred Scott was to make useless any state law that acted as you claim. Taney was telling the world that slave property was inviolate in the United States, and that a citizen of, say, South Carolina could take his slaves to any "free state" at all and count on the support of the Federal government to safeguard his ownership of his slaves.
No Supreme Court decision had ever said that before. That being the case, anything to the contrary you want to quote prior to that moment in Federal law has now been over-ruled by Taney's Court as of 1857.
The numbers and information that Fogel produced in 1974 have been critiqued and addressed as faulty time and again. I personally would not put any faith in the veracity of that book.
I think there is better information out there. Not one of the resources that I have read is trying to wish away slavery. It happened. The idea though is to try to find the true framework in which it occured.
My point is this...how can you relay what you think slavery was like when even the deepest scholars admit that all the evidence still leaves us with questions about what it was like?
You are treating slavery as merely a moral issue and frankly, you're judging by today's standards, not those of 1860. Everything I've read agrees that American bondage must be placed in the framework of the time. That is not a defense it's realism.
American slavery was a social and psychological issue too - for both the slaves and thier owners. For the upteenth time, no one is defending slavery but this is a very complex issue.
IMHO, You should consider this when lashing at the South for the institution of slavery:
The Union treaded heavily on it's moral right to eradicate slavery through war... after the war started. There was plenty of time before the war to have eradicated slavery if that was the true purpose. That did not happen.
Prof. Chandra Manning looks thru thousands of Confederate letters (no doubt with some assistance from students) and finds 1 or 2% that mention slavery...and voila-....a book....
I've read many letters written by Confederates and do not remember a single one that mentioned slavery as a cause.
Once again evidence please; especially as to the 1-2% you cite. I haven't read the book yet but judging how many on both sides of the aisle are reacting to it I think it might be a legit must read. As I understand it the scope f her work is considerably greater than what was included in the book.
__________________ Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
I agree that those 75% Southerners were poor. Poor as church mice..hand to mouth poor...pillar to post poor...
So how did they benefit from slavery?
Or better yet, how did the thought of loosing slavery send the poor to fight for it?
First of all, I have never claimed that they benefitted from slavery. Probably some did (for example, those who rented slaves). However, it has not been the basis for anything I claimed.
I did point out a number of possibilities outside of raw economic benefit that would cause them to defend slavery. Please review my post again to see some of them.
I agree that those 75% Southerners were poor. Poor as church mice..hand to mouth poor...pillar to post poor...
So how did they benefit from slavery?
Or better yet, how did the thought of loosing slavery send the poor to fight for it?
Texas2nd
I think the answer resides in the men who started the Secession ball rolling and who whould become the power in the CS... wealthy slaveowners out to further their own interests and they were willing to do it upon the backs of better men than they.
How did the average CS soldier benefit from slavery; IMHO they did not but after conscription and enlistments were extended for the duration they had little choice.
They knew exactly why & who they were fighting for. Sam Watkins made it perfectly clear that he & others in the rank & file did not appreciate the exemption to service given out slaveonwer of more than 20 slaves. Made it further a rich mans war and poor mans fight.
THe Civil War began because a few slave owning politicos saw their power slipping and they made a power play; forget political coup they went whole hog. It ended because the economy nd military power of the south was broken.
A lot of good men died so a few could get richer... I suppose that is always the way it has been.
__________________ Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
inother words slaves were expoited and recieved $20-30 compesation for this exploitation,k and when free, recieved $40, justa different set of whites reaped the expoitative income they generated, not white labour lords, but white land lords, whoi happened to not be southern citizens as when they were slaves.
I wished the spelling were more correct, but ... I sure can't complain abou that. $30 to $40. Hummm? Times ain't changed much I reckon.
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