Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
The idea that slavery was some sort of transition to something better from barbarism to civilization is so...let's just say if you buy that idea, I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in.
American slavery hummed along pretty well for over two centuries. The legal, and economic condition of the enslaved people never changed. Slavery is not a stage, its salient characteristic is its permanence. It is an unchanging, indeed, unchangeable condition. Changes only can occur when slavery ends.
As an Irish American living next to the most Irish city in America, where my Irish boss can say without irony describe Boston College as "an Irish college you have here in Boston," this stuff about Celts and Anglo Saxons sounds like a lot of hooey. People live in their own time and are responsible for their own actions. I don't think much of subscribing to some sort of ethnic determinism.
The leadership of the south (slaveholders) would not. of their own volition, emancipate their slaves, even to save the confederacy. They would sacrifice their lives and money for the south, they were willing to sacrifice the blood of their sons and daughters on the altar of southern indepence; but not their slaves.
If they would not give up their slaves to save the confederacy, how can one logically argue that they would have freed the slaves, if they had won???
P.S. Logically, the actions above indicates which was more important to the southern leadership, southern independence or their slaves.
While I agree with both of you, Matthew and Opn, it was not quite so simple. The planter (as opposed to the little guy) believed that his life would end if he couldn't have his position which largely depended on his slaves and land.
The peculiar institution had moved the southern elite into a society very much dependent on social position -- which you rarely got from not being a land-owning patrician or wealthy politician, which is is redundant. And it had moved the entire populace into a caste culture, not the least of which were the slaves. And it had moved the entire culture into a state of fear of its own property.
The increasing dependence on slave labor increasingly handicapped a progressive development of economic development for all but a few. It took a few years but, like the wheels of justice, it ground exceedingly fine.
Before I uncur the wrath of some, I'm blaming "the practice," not the people. They got caught up in it as surely as the other half of the country got caught up in an alternative. It made some wealthy and impoverished others. And it totally took all attention away from developing anything economically gainful for all but a few.
Can't put a date on it -- like Topsy, it just growed.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
I'm trying to find a handle on Frank Conner. I've found copies of his book. No other mention. Although I'm beginning to class him right along with E. Merton Coulter who at least has a mention. (We'll not bother to look into DiLusional or the Saints Kennedy.)
Just evaluating the quoted sources.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Ole,
I can well believe that slaveowners inherited a system that really worked for them. Beyond economics, the social, political and racial set up probably seemed like the only reality. Even those who felt uneasy about slavery, the wrenching change necessary to end it were beyond imagining.
For some of the eastern Virginian and South Carolina elites, they thought of themselves as the top of a pyramid that also included poorer, non slaveowning whites on the lower rungs. This is a contrast with whites in the "Western" South(Alabama, Mississippi) who believed in a Jacksonian vision of equality between whites, and absolute superiority over blacks.
Whenever I see hyperbole like that I know the person doing the bloviating has nothing of substance.
Regards,
Cash
You have obviously neither seen the pages, nor the sources, to call them hyperbole, and bloviation (neither of which, by the way, and by definition, has to be either fable or untruth.
Yes, I am back and I do plan to answer UnionBlue, just as soon as he does me the honor of answering my post on Chapter X of Jefferson Davis's denial of slavery as cause of the war...
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