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.
I figured this would stir up a conversation. It is a two parter!!
My question's are,
1. Why due Southern States seem to take the blame for everyones responsibility. (North, South, Middle East, Europe, Africa)
2. Why are the true facts of joint responsibility glazed over in our educational system.
3. Slavery is a cruel, barbaric system. However, it was a viable system in Africa long before we engaged them. With this in mind, why did and due Africans' still engage in the trading of humans'.
4. Could we not say past African Leaders greed was the reason for so many people being transported into slavery. Europe the Middle East and the America's developed a strong economic base from slavery and proffited. Why were educated African leaders not more concerned about there peoples welfare, education, and possible industrial base. It seems like Europe would have given more than muskets, gunpowder, and gin if the leaders would have asked for it.
Slave trade: a root of contemporary African Crisis
By Tunde Obadina
"The past is what makes the present coherent," said Afro-American writer James Baldwin, and the past "will remain horrible for exactly as long as we refuse to assess it honestly."
Why go back five centuries to start an explanation of Africa's crisis in the late 1990s? Must every story of Africa's political and economic under-development begin with the contact with Europe? The intention is not to produce another nationalist tract on how whites, driven by lust for material possession and armed with firearms, gin and a bag full of tricks, subjugated innocent Africans who were living blissfully close to nature. The reason for looking back is that the root of the crisis facing African societies is their failure to come to terms with the consequences of that contact.
Portuguese seamen first landed in Africa in the fourth decade of the fifteenth century. From the outset they seized Africans and shipped them to Europe. In 1441 ten Africans were kidnapped from the Guinea coast and taken to Portugal as gifts to Prince Henry the Navigator. In subsequent expeditions to the West African coast, inhabitants were taken and shipped to Portugal to be sold as servants and objects of curiosity to households. In the Portuguese port of Lagos, where the first African slaves landed in 1442, the old slave market now serves as an art gallery.
Portuguese adventurers who sailed southeast along the Gulf of Guinea in 1472 landed on the coast of what became Nigeria. Others followed. They found people of varying cultures. Some lived in towns ruled by kings with nobility and courtiers, very much like the medieval societies they left behind them. A Dutch visitor to Benin City wrote in around 1600: "As you enter it, the town appears very great. You go into a great broad street, not paved, which seems to be seven or eight times broader than the Warmoes Street in Amsterdam...The houses in this town stand in good order, one close and even with the other, as the houses in Holland stand..." More than a century earlier Benin exchanged ambassadors with Portugal. But not all African societies were as developed. Some enjoyed village existence in primeval forests remote from outside influences.
Economics was the driving force
From the outset, relations between Europe and Africa were economic. Portuguese merchants traded with Africans from trading posts they set up along the coast. They exchanged items like brass and copper bracelets for such products as pepper, cloth, beads and slaves - all part of an existing internal African trade. Domestic slavery was common in Africa and well before European slave buyers arrived, there was trading in humans. Black slaves were captured or bought by Arabs and exported across the Saharan desert to the Mediterranean and Near East.
In 1492, the Spaniard Christopher Columbus discovered for Europe a 'New World'. The find proved disastrous not only for the 'discovered' people but also for Africans. It marked the beginning of a triangular trade between Africa, Europe and the New World. European slave ships, mainly British and French, took people from Africa to the New World. They were initially taken to the West Indies to supplement local Indians decimated by the Spanish Conquistadors. The slave trade grew from a trickle to a flood, particularly from the seventeenth century onwards.
Portugal's monopoly in the obnoxious trade was broken in the sixteenth century when England followed by France and other European nations entered the trade. The English led in the business of transporting young Africans from their homeland to work in mines and till lands in the Americas.
Most slaves sold by Africans
Estimates of the total human loss to Africa over the four centuries of the transatlantic slave trade range from 30 million to 200 million. At the initial stage of the trade parties of Europeans captured Africans in raids on communities in the coastal areas. But this soon gave way to buying slaves from African rulers and traders. The vast majority of slaves taken out of Africa were sold by African rulers, traders and a military aristocracy who all grew wealthy from the business. Most slaves were acquired through wars or by kidnapping. The Portuguese Duatre Pacheco Pereire wrote in the early sixteenth century after a visit to Benin that the kingdom "is usually at war with its neighbours and takes many captives, whom we buy at twelve or fifteen brass bracelets each, or for copper bracelets, which they prize more." Olaudah Equiano, an ex-slave, described in his memoirs published in 1789 how African rulers carried out raids to capture slaves. "When a trader wants slaves, he applies to a chief for them, and tempts him with his wares. It is not extraordinary, if on this occasion he yields to the temptation with as little firmness, and accepts the price of his fellow creature's liberty with as little reluctance, as the enlightened merchant. Accordingly, he falls upon his neighbours, and a desperate battle ensues...if he prevails, and takes prisoners, he gratifies his avarice by selling them." Equiano was born in 1745 in an area under the kingdom of Benin. At the age of ten he was kidnapped by slave hunters who also took his sister. He was more fortunate than most other slaves. After serving in America, the West Indies and England he was able to save for and buy his freedom in 1756 at the age of twenty-one.
Ottobah Cugoano, who was about 13 years old when he was kidnapped in 1770 in Ajumako in today's Ghana, had no doubt the shared responsibility of Africans for the horrid business. Referring to his own capture Cugoano wrote after he regained his freedom "I must own, to the shame of my own countrymen, that I was first kidnapped and betrayed by some of my own complexion, who were the first cause of my exile and slavery." But he added, "If there were no buyers there would be no sellers." By the same token, if there were no sellers there would be no buyers.
A profitable trade
European slave buyers made the greater profit from the despicable trade, but their African partners also prospered. Many grew strong and fat on profits made from selling their brethren. Tinubu square, commercial centre of today's Lagos and home to Nigeria's Central Bank, is named after a major nineteenth century slave trader. Madam Tinubu was born in Egbaland and rose from rags to riches by trading in slaves , salt and tobacco in Badagry. She later became one of Nigeria's pioneering nationalists.
Africa's rulers, traders and military aristocracy protected their interest in the slave trade. They discouraged Europeans from leaving the coastal areas to venture into the interior of the continent. European trading companies realised the benefit of dealing with African suppliers and not unnecessarily antagonising them. The companies could not have mustered the resources it would have taken to directly capture the tens of millions of people shipped out of Africa. It was far more sensible and safer to give Africans guns to fight the many wars that yielded captives for the trade. The slave trading network stretched deep into the Africa's interior. Slave trading firms were aware of their dependency on African suppliers. The Royal African Company, for instance, instructed its agents on the West coast "if any differences happen, to endeavour an amicable accommodation rather than use force." They were "to endeavour to live in all friendship with them" and "to hold frequent palavers with the Kings and the Great Men of the Country, and keep up a good correspondent with them, ingratiating yourself by such prudent methods" as may be deemed appropriate.
Contact with Europe opened new images of the world for the African elite and presented them with products of a civilisation which as the centuries passed became more technologically differentiated from their own. The slave trade whetted their appetite for the products of a changing world. Sadly it was not only tinpot rulers who were mesmerised by the glitters of western artefacts. An African slave in Cuba in the nineteenth century recalled how his people were captivated by the bright colour of European manufacturers. "It was the scarlet which did for the Africans: both the kings and the rest surrendered without a struggle. When the kings saw that the whites were taking out these scarlet handkerchiefs as if they were waving, they told the blacks, "Go on then, go get a scarlet handkerchief" and the blacks were so excited by the scarlet they ran down to the ships, like sheep and there were captured."
European traders saw the advantages of helping African kings and chiefs realise their desire to acquire western culture, if not for themselves then for their children. Hugh Crow, who commanded the last British slave ship to leave a British port, wrote "It has always been the practice of merchants and commanders of ships to Africa, to encourage the natives to send their children to England as it not only conciliates their friendship, and softens their manner, but adds greatly to the security of the traders." With their children in Europe, African chiefs were likely to be more accommodating, knowing full well their offspring could be held as ransom.
European powers also hoped that by entertaining African princes in Europe to win the friendship of their fathers. By far the most important reason why African rulers and traders participated in the slave trade was their desire for its material rewards and the power it brought. They were obsessed with the variety of goods available through the trade. Locally produced equivalents of some merchandise, like cloth and jewellery, existed but greater satisfaction and prestige was got from having imported varieties. The man with a warehouse full with goods from abroad was a powerful figure in the community, able to buy favours and influence with his ill-gotten wealth.
African traders resist abolition of obnoxious trade
When Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 it not only had to contend with opposition from white slavers but also from African rulers who had become accustomed to wealth gained from selling slaves or from taxes collected on slaves passed through their domain. African slave-trading classes were greatly distressed by the news that legislators sitting in parliament in London had decided to end their source of livelihood. But for as long as there was demand from the Americas for slaves, the lucrative business continued.
English missionary and abolitionist Thomas Buxton wrote in 1840 that the best way to suppress the slave trade was to offer Africa's slaving elites legitimate business that would give them means to satisfy their hunger for Western goods. "The African has acquired a taste for the civilised world. They have become essential to his. To say that the African, under present circumstances, shall not deal in man, is to say he shall long in vain for his accustomed gratification." This was the crux of the African condition.
The slave trade business continued in many parts of Africa for many decades after the British abolished it. For as long as there was demand for slave labour in the Americas, the supply was available. The British set up a naval blockade to stop ships carrying slaves from West Africa, but it was not very effective in suppressing the trade. Thousands of slave ships were detained during the decades the blockade was in operation. One Lieutenant Patrick Forbes, a British naval officer, estimated in 1849 that during a period of 26 years 103,000 slaves were emancipated by the warships of the naval blockade while ships carrying 1,795,000 slaves managed to slip past the blockage and land their cargo in the Americas.
British efforts to suppress the trade made it even more profitable because the price of slaves rose in the Americas. The numerous wars that plagued Yorubaland for half a century following the fall of the Oyo empire was largely driven by demand for slaves. Reverend Samuel Johnson wrote of the subjugation of neighbouring Yoruba kingdoms by Ibadan war-chiefs in the 1850s: "Slave-raiding now became a trade to many who would get rich speedily." It took the intervention of British colonialism to impose peace in Yorubaland in 1893. Slave trading for export ended in Nigeria and elsewhere in West Africa after slavery ended in the Spanish colonies of Brazil and Cuba in 1880. A consequence of the ending of the slave trade was the expansion of domestic slavery as African businessmen replaced trade in human chattel with increased export of primary commodities. Labour was needed to cultivate the new source of wealth for the African elites.
What if the West not abolish slavery?
Had Europe not decided to end the slave trade and the New World ceased demanding chattel labour, the transatlantic trade might still be rolling today. The ending of the obnoxious business had nothing to do with events in Africa. Rulers and traders there would have happily continued to sell humans for as long as there was demand for them. One can only imagine how more determinedly African merchants would have clung on to the business as goods offered by European buyers became more attractive with changes in Western technology. How many souls would African chiefs have been prepared to trade for a television or a car? It is a disturbing thought.
To highlight the role of the African elites in the slave trade is not to argue the obvious that they were morally depraved like the Europeans who bought slaves from them. It is to show that the corrupt leadership that undermines democracy and economic development in African countries today has a long history. The selfishness and disregard for the welfare of fellow humans manifest in the sacking of national resources by modern African leaders also motivated the pillaging of the human resources of the continent in times past.
A long history of corrupt African rulng classes
Some African writers, seeking to maximise the culpability of Europe in the slave trade, minimise the part played by African rulers and traders or explain it as the result of white trickery. Such distortion of history may make the moral case against European imperialism seem sharper, but it does nothing to aid the understanding by Africans of a critical period of their history. African slavers acted out of their own volition and for their self interest. They took advantage of the opportunity provided by Europe to consume the products of its civilisation. The triangular slave trade was a major part in the early stages of the emergence of the international market. The role of slave-trading African ruling classes in this market is not radically different from the position of the African elite in today's global economy. They both traded the resources of their people for their own gratification and prosperity. In the process they helped to weaken their nations and dim their prospects for economic and social development.
The slave trade had a profound economic, social, cultural and psychological impact on African societies and peoples. It did more to undermine African development than the colonialism that followed it. Through the trade the continent lost a large proportion of its young and able bodied population. Guyanese historian Walter Rodney cites in his book 'How Europe Underdeveloped Africa' one estimate showing that while Europe's population more than quadruped between 1650 and 1900, Africa's population rose only by 20 per cent during the same period. The loss of work-force was not more serious than the damage to the social and economic fabric of the society and the undermining of the confidence of Africans in their historical evolution.
The transatlantic slave trade and slavery were major elements in the emergence of capitalism in the West. As Karl Marx noted, they were as pivotal to western industrialisation as the new machinery and financial systems. Slavery gave value to the colonies in the New World which were crucial in the development of international trade. Trinidadian historian Eric Williams showed in his well-researched book Capitalism and Slavery, that the slave trade and slavery helped to make England the workshop of the world. Profit from slave-worked colonies and the slave trade were major sources of capital accumulation which helped finance the industrial revolution. The transportation of slave transformed British seaport areas into booming centres. One Englishman calling himself 'A Genuine "Dicky Sam", had no doubt about the link between the slave trade and prosperity of seaport city of Liverpool. "Like the magical wand, the traffic worked wonders; once poor, now rich; once ignoble, now great. Churches have been built and grand legacies bequeathed to all sorts of charities."
Europeans built empires, Africans drunk gin
While Europe invested profits from the trade in laying the foundation of a powerful economic empire, African kings and traders were content with wearing used caps and admiring themselves in worthless mirrors while swigging adulterated brandy bought with the freedom of their kinsmen. Virtually all the items imported during the nefarious business were for consumption or weapons for waging wars. A slave ship's manifest published in 1665 listed items carried for sale to Africans as old hats, caps, salt, swords, knives, axe-heads, hammers, belts, sheepskin gloves, bracelets, iron jugs and even "cats to catch their mice." One African trader calling himself Grandy King George was quite specific in his demand. He wrote to a slave captain: "send me one lucking-glass, six foot long by six foot wide." He also asked for an armchair, a gold mounted cane and a stool." The more common imports were alcohol, guns and gunpowder , salt and textiles. The quality of the items shipped to Africa was inferior - the spirits were adulterated and the guns designed for the African market.
Africa's contemporary history may have been different had its rulers and traders demanded capital goods for use in building the economy rather than trinkets and booze. As it was, the slave trade arrested economic development in Africa. The loss in human resources had dire consequences for labour dependent agricultural economies. Any possibility that the internal dynamics of African society could have led to the development of capitalism and industrialisation was blocked by the slave trade. The few existing manufacturing activities were either destroyed or denied conditions for growth. Cheap European textiles, for instance, undermined local cloth production. Samuel Johnson wrote in the late nineteenth century about Yorubaland: "Before the period of intercourse with Europeans, all articles made of iron and steel, from weapons of war to pins and needles, were of home manufacture; but the cheaper and more finished articles of European make, especially cutlery, though less durable are fast displacing home-made wares." The predominance of the slave trade prevented the emergence of business classes that could have spearheaded the internal exploitation of the resources of their societies. The slave trade drew African societies into the international economy but as fodder for western economic development.
Africa devastated by slave trade wars
Inter-communal wars waged to procure slaves were intensely destructive of human lives. Tens of thousands of people were slaughtered in a single skirmish. The wars and rampant kidnappings fuelled hostility and suspicion between communities. Distrust was a basic requirement for individual and communal survival. The slave trade arrested and distorted the cultural development of African societies. It affected the meaning people gave to the world and their place within it. Increased uncertainty of life gave added force to superstitious beliefs and customs. People sought salvation and protection from the spiritual world. They paid homage to gods to safeguard themselves and their families from misfortune. The psychological impact of the dehumanising trade was crippling. There was constant anxiety caused by perpetual fear of being captured and herded away like common animals to a place of no return. Some Africans believed that whites took slaves to eat them.
Whites assert racial superiority
It was during the slave trade and slavery that white people affirmed their superiority over blacks. It is not difficult to understand why white traders who bought black people for price of adulterated brandy and packed them onto slave ships like cattle could consider themselves to be superior. Though most were illiterate, crude and drunken, white slave traders were free men herding flocks of human cattle. As the centuries passed Europeans became more and more scornful of black people. By the nineteenth century various theories of black inferiority were developed and used to justify the colonisation of Africa. During the slave trade Africans came to believe themselves to be inferior. They lost confidence in themselves, their culture and their ability to development. The late Afro-American civil rights leader Martin Luther King's comment that few people realise the extent that slavery had "scarred the soul and wounded the spirit of the black man," holds true not only with respect to the descendants of the Africans who arrived in the New World but also the descendants of those left behind. "The backwardness of black Africa," said the late Senegalese president Leopold Senghor, "...has been caused less by colonialism than by the Slave Trade."
Would the history of Africa have been turned out differently had it's leaders taken the advice of eighteenth century French thinker Jean Jacques Rousseau. He said: "If I were chief of one of the African peoples, I declare that I would have a gallows set up at the frontier, on which I would hang, without mercy, the first European who dared enter the country, and the first citizen who tried to leave it." Perhaps if more African rulers had militarily resisted the design of the better armed Europeans their peoples might have paid a bloody price, as did the Indians in the Americas who fought to keep their lands and expel the white intruders. Before Columbus arrived in Hispanoila in 1492, the native population of North America was perhaps 40 million. By 1900, in the U.S. less than quarter of a million remained, scattered among 1,500 remote reservations.
Africa's underdevelopment was not inevitable
Would Africans have suffered the same genocide had they tried to end the slave trade? Unlikely. It is doubtful that the human cost of resistance would have been greater than the many millions of Africans killed in slave producing wars as well as those eaten by sharks after being jettisoned during the Atlantic crossings. We cannot know for certain. It seems more likely that Europe would have had to look elsewhere for cheap labour. It was one thing for European nations to use military might to protect their coastal trading posts and subdue disgruntled local chiefs, it would have been an entirely different matter for them to penetrate the interior of the continent and fight the hundreds of war that fed the slave trade.
The cost of such ventures would have made the price of slaves unattractive to the plantation owners in the Americas. As the historian Philip Curtin noted " If the prices of African-born slaves had not been competitive with those of labour from other sources - native born or European - the slave trade could never have come into existence, no matter what the epidemiological consequences of movement across the Atlantic."
Had cheap Africans not been available to work the land and mines of the 'New World', white planters and landowners would have sought other sources of cheap labour. They would have made more use of the native population and also turned more to Europe for labour. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries large numbers of poor whites were shipped to the 'New World', most involuntarily, to work on plantations, mines and as servants. Some poor whites kidnapped on European streets were sold in the West Indies much in the same way as Africans were. Indentured servants, convicts and deportees from Europe were often treated not much better than black slaves. But as the transatlantic slave trade boomed, the number of whites in forced labour decreased. It was because of the relative cheapness of African slave labour, and therefore the plantation owners' preference for them, that the trade in white labour ended. This gave rise to what Afro-American writer William DuBois described as the replacement of "a caste of condition by a caste of race." Had the costs of black slaves been much dearer, Europe might have become a major source of unfree labour.
1. America began with a promise: <u>all men are created equal.</u>
2. America did not keep this promise.
3. Slavery was an American sin.
4. One evil cannot be justified by pointing to another evil.
5. African slavery, biblical slavery, wage slavery, ancient slavery does not minimize, mitigate, justify, neutralize or moralize American slavery along and its collateral abuse and inhuman culture.
6. Slavery in the majority of states was abolished prior to 1861.
7. Southerners were determined to maintain and retain their slavery into perpetuity according to the promise of the CSA Constitution.
8. The CSA was willing to rip their country apart to achieve this goal of slavery into perpetuity.
9. The CSA was willing to sacrifice its young manhood to achieve this goal of slavery into perpetuity.
10. A well-crafted argument of distraction and twisted semantics cannot change the above.
Connie that well-crafted argument of distraction was made by an African. When I was in Africa most are ashamed of what happened however, they realize there fathers also caused and advanced slavery on the continent!
I am not making excuses for the South however, It would seem you like others want to make it a simple Southern Issue.
1. The promise was written by some individuals who owned slaves and others who did not care about slavery if it ment a National profit or money in Northern coffers.
2. America evidently never desired to keep the promise or it would have freed all men regardless of color or standing the day it was declared! Why wait so long?
3. Slavery is a sin of Mankind, not just America.
4. No one has justified slavery. However, by holding Americans to a higher standard and Northerns using the moral "High Ground" are we not saying those African Leaders are inferior and their leaders should not be held accountable due to the said inferiority and ignorance?
However, Every Southern person is accountable (for the sins of the world)? Never mind the Northern Government and our Founding Fathers (Their Poop does not smell) ILMAO!! Sounds like someone does not want our and other Nations to bear the responsibility (Just one part of it)! Our own Government allowed this to happen and fester.
5. No one said it did! However, it was not just the United States involved try Africa itself! I doubt the local African WarLord really feared or thought Union forces would come over and free the other slaves in Africa they owned and used. Or Sherman would march thru Kenya!
6. True, however, it was not in Africa explain that.
7. Their slavery? Funny, I guess Washington is blameless or clueless. Would it not be a Governmental Issue.
8. Tell that to the dirt poor farmer of Georgia, I guess he should have had more schooling like those educated Yanks.
9. Sorry, I did not realize the majority of men fought to keep slaves most of them did not own.
10. Why cant we face up to the Historical truth? You reap what you sew! And just maybe God saw fit to tear this country apart because both North and South were equally responsible for allowing something like this to happen.
Sean: I am concerned about the issue not the author.
American Slavery and American Civil War belongs to us, not greedy, evil others from different times or distance continents.
I've done a lot of reading on the war and have yet to come across any contemporary references to Africa or the African slave trade as either a consideration for making a decision to secede or as an impetus for rationalizing American slavery and justifying secession. There has to be a direct link from concept to action in order to be considered a valid theory.
I'm going to try a point by point reply to the points made above. I agree with the majority but feel it is important that a few things be mentioned.
1. America began with a promise: all men are created equal. The exception was indians, Slaves, asians and Irishmen... add any that you want of the unwashed who came to America.
2. America did not keep this promise. To our everlasting shame this is true but we've come a long way toward doing so. And are a lot closer than any other nation on earth.
3. Slavery was an American sin. I would amend that to say that Slavery was a human sin. Slavery was COMMON around the world as late as the 1840's and was not considered a sin at the time. In fact all too many clergy used the bible to justify slavery. Black people were not the only Slaves in history of that I can assure you. Slavery was in no way an American institution. In fact there were quite a few white slaves (from North Africa) in the US and were in fact prized for their "higher levels of civilization." Many Native American slaves were shipped to Spain and Portugal from South America. So in other words slavery was nothing new at the time the United States was created. In fact (right or wrong) it was accepted as a normal status quo.
4. One evil cannot be justified by pointing to another evil. Amen Though other evils should never be forgotten in order to stress that evil.
5. African slavery, biblical slavery, wage slavery, ancient slavery does not minimize, mitigate, justify, neutralize or moralize American slavery along and its collateral abuse and inhuman culture.
American slavery should never be forgotten, it is a blemish upon our nation that has stained it's very soul. Though it is amusing how quickly the rest of the world cries fowl if their role in slavery throughout the ages is mentioned. That slavery has been dead and buried (in the US at least) for at least the last fifty years (140 officially)is a tribute to the men and women who spent their lives abolishing it. The very idea that slavery still exists in the US is an afront to all that the great civil rights leaders of my fathers generation accomplished.
6. Slavery in the majority of states was abolished prior to 1861. Very true, but the minority of those states were willing to fight and die to keep it. Thank God they lost, and they had quite a bit of support from the Copperheads in the north. And the English from across the Atlantic...
7. Southerners were determined to maintain and retain their slavery into perpetuity according to the promise of the CSA Constitution.
The percentage of Southerners who practised slavery were a distinct minority. And lets never forget that they lost. That piece of paper isn't worth the paper it's written on.
8. The CSA was willing to rip their country apart to achieve this goal of slavery into perpetuity. Very true and all of their actions were for naught... again they lost.
9. The CSA was willing to sacrifice its young manhood to achieve this goal of slavery into perpetuity.
Again true, though it has often been argued that most Confederate soldiers signed up to fight for States Rights, not slavery. The majority of Confederate soldiers owned no slaves.
10. A well-crafted argument of distraction and twisted semantics cannot change the above.
True if you mean that Slavery was an inherently evil institution. In that I agree with you. It is also true that even now there are those within our own government who wouldn't mind at least a partial return to the status quo of the pre civil war era. Thank God they are the extreme minority.
What I will never accept are the arguments that because I am a white man I am somehow responsible for the evils that slavery has casued. Balderdash! Five of the six males in my family who were in the US at the time of the CW paid dearly to win that war. The rest of my family tree was still either on the other side of the Pacific or in Europe at the time. And my wifes side... were either slaves or French Canadians going "my names Benit an I ain't in it!"
__________________ 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 was not trying to rationalize American slavery only show that slavery was acceptable (right or wrong) in not only Africa , but Europe, America, and the Middle East hundreds of years before the Civil War. Additionally, it is still acceptable in some parts of Africa and the Middle East today.
What concerns me is, that, in school, we teach our children a North (good) South (bad) attitude. This attitude leads to more ignorance and prejudice about the subject.
If we are going to teach history lets teach the facts. To teach children one section of the country was evil and wrong and glaze over the fact the "Enlightened Side" took over 50 years to solve the problem they helped institute is ridiculous. Or is it Political Correctness.
I also feel to teach children that Southern whites are the primary reason their relatives were slaves is wrong(Like it just suddenly occurred in America) (Owners and Politicians (North and South) are equally responsible.
Most walk away with the concept that their own people shared no hand in what occurred to them (Never realizing their own leaders used them, and in most cases, far worse than we did).
If our own Government would have stuck to its gun's from the start then maybe we would have not fought a war. The fact is we are teaching a distorted truth. We need to teach the whole truth or not teach at all.
Why can Africans face and except the brutal truth of their part in the slave trade and we will not teach our own youth their fathers also were just as responsible as we were.
OUR AND THEIR FATHERS WERE ALL RESPONSIBLE NOT JUST ONE SECTION OF THE COUNTRY!!
IF discussion topples ignorance then why will we not discuss these topics in our school systems? It would seem like we are more concerned with keeping todays youth ignorant.
How can we glaze over the history of slavery so easily? How can we say the history of slavery dating back is not important? Did we not fight a war over slavery?
I would think that informing the youth of its brutal history may see them come away with a better understanding and that it is not just a issue along Southern racial lines.
I'm going to try a point by point reply to the points made above. I agree with the majority but feel it is important that a few things be mentioned.
1. The exception was indians, Slaves, asians and Irishmen... add any that you want of the unwashed who came to America.
A non sequitur. The promise did not qualify entitlement. It said very specifically <u>ALL MEN</u> Because we did not follow the promise, we created our own internal hypocrisy.
2. America did not keep this promise. To our everlasting shame this is true but we've come a long way toward doing so. And are a lot closer than any other nation on earth.
Agreed
3. Slavery was an American sin. I would amend that to say that Slavery was a human sin.
All sin is human. All humans commit sin. But we are talking specifically about our American slavery and our national sin. Bringing in anyone else's sin is a diversion to whitewash responsibility for our sin.
4. One evil cannot be justified by pointing to another evil. Amen Though other evils should never be forgotten in order to stress that evil.
Another non sequitur. Has no relationship to the point which is about our American evil not the Africans or the Egyptians.
5. African slavery, biblical slavery, wage slavery, ancient slavery does not minimize, mitigate, justify, neutralize or moralize American slavery along and its collateral abuse and inhuman culture. American slavery should never be forgotten, it is a blemish upon our nation that has stained it's very soul. Though it is amusing how quickly the rest of the world cries fowl if their role in slavery throughout the ages is mentioned.
What does the rest of the world have to do with our self-examination? This is our debate and I haven't noticed any Romans or Greeks participating.
6. Slavery in the majority of states was abolished prior to 1861. Very true, but the minority of those states were willing to fight and die to keep it. Thank God they lost, and they had quite a bit of support from the Copperheads in the north. And the English from across the Atlantic...
And your point is what? There were unionists in the South and even a small enclave abolitionists. And that says what about American slavery?
7. Southerners were determined to maintain and retain their slavery into perpetuity according to the promise of the CSA Constitution. The percentage of Southerners who practised slavery were a distinct minority.
All who fought under that banner, whether they owned slaves or not, were fighting to retain slavery into perpetuity as stated in the CSA Constitution represented by that banner. All southerners had a stake in slavery, benefited by it and aspired to living in the mansion on the hill. Augustus Longstreet, uncle of James, did not own slaves because he could not make his plantation pay. Yet he was one of the most avid proponents of slavery and preached the benefits of the system from his pulpit. Roger Pryor did not own slaves but was one of the loudest and most strident fire-eaters in Virginia.
8. The CSA was willing to rip their country apart to achieve this goal of slavery into perpetuity. Very true and all of their actions were for naught... again they lost.
9. The CSA was willing to sacrifice its young manhood to achieve this goal of slavery into perpetuity. Again true, though it has often been argued that most Confederate soldiers signed up to fight for States Rights, not slavery. The majority of Confederate soldiers owned no slaves.
See point above. I also suggest reading <u>For Cause and Comrades</u>by James McPherson. Secondly, not one document exists to support that soldiers' signed up to fight for state rights. All contemporary southern documents, speeches, editorials proclaimed that the only state right anyone cared about was slavery. See <u>Commissioners of Secession</u> by Charles B. Dew.
10. A well-crafted argument of distraction and twisted semantics cannot change the above.
True if you mean that Slavery was an inherently evil institution. In that I agree with you. It is also true that even now there are those within our own government who wouldn't mind at least a partial return to the status quo of the pre civil war era. Thank God they are the extreme minority.
And this says what. Because we have evil in the government today, the evil of yesterday is less?
What I will never accept are the arguments that because I am a white man I am somehow responsible for the evils that slavery has casued.
No one is responsible for another person's sins. Every action, good or bad belongs to the person who did it, not descendents, nor neighbors, nor kin folk. IMO what we need to do acknowldge the sins of our heritage, stop whitewashing them and recognize that we are human just like our ancestors and can easily fall into the same mistakes. If we do not remember, then it will be forgotten and we will repeat the errors.
I find fault with some of your points and definetly find fault with your research. Though I admit I don't have the books handy to reference individual page numbers for footnotes and frankly would rather not turn this into a college paper.
The idea that all Confederate Soldiers supported slavery is not only preposterous it's an inane point as at least 30% and probably closer to 60% were illiterate; after the South began running short of manpower the draft was far from voluntary... in fact there were quite a few men (entire companies & even a few Regiments) that spoke no English at all. So your point that all who fought under the banner supported slavery is moot. Now this is not to say that many of the men who fought under the Confederate Banner didn't support slavery. All too many did but they were not always the majority and did not represent every Confederate soldier. Slavery was considered second to States Rights.
As to the the rest of the worlds opinion... there were Europeans from every nation in Europe represented in the Union Army and the majority were first generation American... Many of those nations had slavery or its ilk at the time those men came to the US... So I do see the neccessity to look at the entire world when quantifying anything about the Civil War and especially slavery. So in other words several Romans and Greeks did participate. In fact General Custer had a former member of the Papal Guard on his Staff at Gettysburg and there was a Greek soldier who won the CMH... incidently he spoke no English at the time of his award and IIRC he had been in the US less than a year. Incidently there was also at least one Regiment of Arab Muslims that served with the Union Army... IIRC they were a Michigan or Ohio unit. So you can add that there were even probably a few Egyptians and Africans with a say on the outcome of the War.
In other words the Civil War was an International War in the sense that the men involved made it one. Most Union Soldiers had no idea that Slavery was even an issue though this would change as the war progressed. And I would say the same held true for the Confederate Armies. I might suggest you read Bell Irvin Wiley's excellent works: the LIFE OF BILLY YANK and THE LIFE OF JOHNNY REB. Or perhaps James Mcpherson Battle Cry of Freedom... you don't find many better works on the Civil War than that. I might also suggest, if the opportunity ever presents itself, to spend a day going through the microfiched newspapers of Charleston from 1861-1865. They are available in the SC State Historical Society, or were 5 or so years ago. If you persist in thinking that most Confederate soldiers joined the Confederate Army to maintain Slavery keep in mind something from Josua Chamberlains memoirs about Confederate POW's after Gettysburg... The POW's had no idea that the war had anything to do with slavery and three of the four men admitted they had never seen a black man until joining the Confederate Army.
Trying to place blame or paint men as evil when we have not walked in their shoes is not the way to do it.
We don't need to place the blame, those who are guilty are dead. Forget... never. Those that forget history are doomed to repeat it. As to a whitewash... Our educational system is so guilty of that it is criminal. Concentrating upon the evil that the US has done instead of even mentioning the good is again outright foolish. What is needed is a balance... showing the good AND the evil. I know I graduated HS w/ a guilty feeling about the actions of the US. Thankfully, I had a college professor that educated me. I can point to his 400 level class on the Civil War as what began my questions about American History as is taught in the public schools.
I'm proud of my heritage and proud to be an American. I know all too well the evil done in America by other Americans. I also know too well the evil done in the name of Christianity by Christians. I won't let it make me any less of an American or a Christian.
I'm all for an HONEST appraisal of our history. But by God I want honesty.
For instance I know that white men did terrible things to the Native Americans. I also know that the Indians were a lot more than just victims. They gave as good as they received and to say anything less dishonors a warriors spirit. In the same vein to say that Confederate Soldiers were all evil or all supported slavery is just plain poor scholorship. Oh yes what the CSA represented is, in my opinion, the worst evil that this continent has ever wrought. But like anything else you cannot blame ALL or even the majority when they didn't even see themselves as fighting for the evil of slavery. What I try to do is what I believe President Lincoln intended... forgiveness and reconstruction.
The War is Over, the CSA lost. Slavery is over in this country because of that War. The men who fought on both sides of the flag deserve respect as outstanding fighting men who endured what you and I can only imagine.
Painting those men with the broad brush of "Racist" or "Evil" is wrong. Especially when there is ample evidence that quite a few men who were staunchly anti slavery served with the Confederate armies because they felt a loyalty to their state... Now that is tragedy.
As to my comment to evil in the government today... I was making the point that evil was nothing new in the 1860's, neither was slavery in the Civil War. There are always those who wish to hold others down for their own personnel power, unfortunately I think there always will be.
__________________ 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
The idea that all Confederate Soldiers supported slavery is not only preposterous
Soldiers signed up to fight under a banner that symbolized the CSA Constitution and war goals of the CSA government. That war goal was "slavery Into perpetuity" as stated in the CSA Constitution by achieving independence from its lawful government. While individuals may have had additional reasons, this does not erase the war goal.
it's an inane point as at least 30% and probably closer to 60% were illiterate; after the South began running short of manpower the draft was far from voluntary...
According to the 1860 census the South as we define for it (states in the Confederacy) had achieved 80% literacy rate. The North was slightly higher 85% to 90%. Difference is the south did not have a system of free public schools.
in fact there were quite a few men (entire companies & even a few Regiments) that spoke no English at all. So your point that all who fought under the banner supported slavery is moot.
Which specific units were non-English speaking? Again all who fought carried the banner of the CSA and that banner had one war goal. Why an individual signed up is moot. He knew what the war was about and why there was a war.
Now this is not to say that many of the men who fought under the Confederate Banner didn't support slavery. All too many did but they were not always the majority and did not represent every Confederate soldier. Slavery was considered second to States Rights.
There is not one piece of evidence that the concept of states rights trumped slavery. Provide a document, a speech, an editorial to support this. One state right and only one was worth of fighting for and that was slavery.
As to the the rest of the worlds opinion... there were Europeans from every nation in Europe represented in the Union Army and the majority were first generation American... Many of those nations had slavery or its ilk at the time those men came to the US...
So you are saying world opinion influenced the south to secede for preserving slavery into perpetuity?
So I do see the neccessity to look at the entire world when quantifying anything about the Civil War and especially slavery. So in other words several Romans and Greeks did participate. In fact General Custer had a former member of the Papal Guard on his Staff at Gettysburg and there was a Greek soldier who won the CMH...
And this Roman and Greek influenced secesssion and the northern war goals in what way?
incidently he spoke no English at the time of his award and IIRC he had been in the US less than a year. Incidently there was also at least one Regiment of Arab Muslims that served with the Union Army... IIRC they were a Michigan or Ohio unit. So you can add that there were even probably a few Egyptians and Africans with a say on the outcome of the War.
How did the Arab Muslims influence the perpetuation of slavery or the abolition of slavery?
In other words the Civil War was an International War in the sense that the men involved made it one. Most Union Soldiers had no idea that Slavery was even an issue though this would change as the war progressed. And I would say the same held true for the Confederate Armies.
The armies who fought the war were the most literate in history. Newspapers were read religiously in camp and on the march. A vigorous trade took place across the lines to trade papers. Unless you are willing to contend that these soldiers were too stupid to read the events as they unfolded, this is just hyperbole. And no one was too blind to see hoards of refugee blacks clog the lines around Union army or to see them working to build entrenchments and cook for southern officers. Those soldiers were not living in a vacuum, nor were they mindless fools.
I might suggest you read Bell Irvin Wiley's excellent works: the LIFE OF BILLY YANK and THE LIFE OF JOHNNY REB. Or perhaps James Mcpherson Battle Cry of Freedom...
Please provide the pages in <u>Billy Yank,</u> <u>Johnny Reb</u> or <u>Battle Cry</u> that support any of your contentions. I will gladly look them up and reconsider my position. In the meantime, try Charles B. Dew, <u>Apostles of Secession</u>, <u>Race & Reunion</u> by David Blight,<u>The Imperiled Union </u> by Kenneth Stampff, as well as <u>Drawn by the Sword</u> and <u>For Cause and Commrades</u> both by James McPherson for a wider view of both our collective memories as well as the goals of both North & South in the conflict of Civil War.
you don't find many better works on the Civil War than that. I might also suggest, if the opportunity ever presents itself, to spend a day going through the microfiched newspapers of Charleston from 1861-1865. They are available in the SC State Historical Society, or were 5 or so years ago. If you persist in thinking that most Confederate soldiers joined the Confederate Army to maintain Slavery keep in mind something from Josua Chamberlains memoirs about Confederate POW's after Gettysburg... The POW's had no idea that the war had anything to do with slavery and three of the four men admitted they had never seen a black man until joining the Confederate Army.
I was not aware that Joshua Chamberlain directed a scientific study to determine why CSA POW's went to war. Does he provide background, length of service, battles fought, political affiliation? Where is the study?
Trying to place blame or paint men as evil when we have not walked in their shoes is not the way to do it.
Please provide the text in which I painted anyone evil? Thank God I did not walk in the shoes of Holocaust victims. But I do think I can understand what happened. It isn't hard to read the secession papers or the editorials in the antebellum era or the writings of Calhoun to understand the goals of the CSA.
We don't need to place the blame, those who are guilty are dead. Forget... never. Those that forget history are doomed to repeat it. As to a whitewash... Our educational system is so guilty of that it is criminal.
Does that mean that death lets a perpetrator off the hook for history? The that must mean that all the evil African slave traders are not to blame for nothing. To get a real feel of the whitewashing that has gone on for 140 years. read <u>Race & Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory</u>. Read <u>Gone With the Wind</u> and see <u>Birth of a Nation.</u>
Concentrating upon the evil that the US has done instead of even mentioning the good is again outright foolish. What is needed is a balance... showing the good AND the evil. I know I graduated HS w/ a guilty feeling about the actions of the US. Thankfully, I had a college professor that educated me. I can point to his 400 level class on the Civil War as what began my questions about American History as is taught in the public schools.
I have no problem with looking at this great nation which includes all citizens, black and white, north and south.
Painting those men with the broad brush of "Racist" or "Evil" is wrong. Especially when there is ample evidence that quite a few men who were staunchly anti slavery served with the Confederate armies because they felt a loyalty to their state... Now that is tragedy.
Here we go again, one man is not guilty because another one is more so. Who were these staunchly anti-slavery men who served with the Confederacy. I doubt you can find any since anyone who was anti-slavery was run out of the south i.e. the Grimkes?
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