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 snippets and the historical record show a clear (and rapid) progression of legislation to control and eradicate slavery of any kind and as various groups tried to continue the ILLEGAL practice, more restrictive legislation followed, as day the night. (and each new day saw a new birth of Freedom).
Nit Picking over the little that was not being done, while ignoring the earth changing political and social changes that was being accomplished at the same time, requires a blindness so complete, that it surely must be self-willed.
"Nit Picking over the little that was not being done"
?
Coolies were the replacement for the African trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Hundreds of thousands (if not millions) were imported into the Western World.
From what I can tell the 1862 & 1869 U.S. laws were no more than a pieces of paper. I've found no evidence of their enforcement.
Anyone hung or jailed for shipping coolies?
__________________ POWER & MONEY
"Your New-York bankers and merchants are shrewd people, but I never gave them credit for so much sagacity as when they took the Government Loan. It was not merely patriotism, it was a high stroke of policy. It has saved the Government, and what they will regard as equally important, saved them from a great financial disaster."
"Nit Picking over the little that was not being done"
?
Coolies were the replacement for the African trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Hundreds of thousands (if not millions) were imported into the Western World.
From what I can tell the 1862 & 1869 U.S. laws were no more than a pieces of paper. I've found no evidence of their enforcement.
Anyone hung or jailed for shipping coolies?
We don't enforce immigration laws Battallion. We got all kinds of immigration reform legislation, but we don't enforce immigration laws. Never Have; Never Will. Lady Libety says, "Give Us your poor, your tired, you're huddle masses willing to do the work Americans won't do."
Importation of slaves into the US was banned since 1806(?). Unless, 'of course' the south was "Illegally" importing them.
California (and Oregon, I believe) came into the Union as Free States, before the CW. So slave labor was illegal And since 1862 the Chinese could not be imported to disposed or sold for 'Any' term of years or for 'any' time 'whatever', as 'servants' or apprentices, or to be held to 'servic'e or 'labor'.
If people tried to circumvent this law, they were acting 'illegally' and were subject to prosecution. The fact that some criminal elements may have tried to get around the law, does not reflect on the intent of the law.
After all, did the fact that african slaves were still being smuggled to southern slave owners, negate or nullify the 1806 Ban? Did the fact that few importers OR southern purchasers were prosecuted, nullify the intent of that Ban?
I've found no evidence of their enforcement. Anyone hung or jailed for shipping coolies?
Anyone else notice the shift? We started with legal enslavement of coolies. When that was shown to be false, we've moved on to enforcement.
Government, then as now, is good with intentions, abysmal at action. But, as the subject was intentions, the point is made. Prosecution notwithstanding, the government moved to halt the practice.
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
California (and Oregon, I believe) came into the Union as Free States, before the CW. So slave labor was illegal And since 1862 the Chinese could not be imported to disposed or sold for 'Any' term of years or for 'any' time 'whatever', as 'servants' or apprentices, or to be held to 'servic'e or 'labor'.
Slavery did not become illegal until 1865 with the 15th(?) amendment. The importation of slaves became illegal in 1808.
Don't recall and haven't my copy of the Constitution at hand, but wasn't the ban on importation concerned primarily with the African trade? Or was it universal? It would seem that a '62 bill aimed specifically at Chinese importation would infer that the '08 ban was insufficient.
As a slight aside, I wasn't aware that there were non-Chinese coolies. Does anyone have a number for other nationalities involved?
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
One of our posters, mentioned that although the vast majority of 'coolies' were chinese, the term itself seems to have been a generic term, used by whites for 'all' orientals; probably because most whites then, as now, had great difficulty differentiating one oriental from another.
The point most of these southrons miss (or refuse to admit) is that up to the election of 1860, the thrust of almost all Federal Legislation concerning slavery in the Union was overwhelmingly pro-slavery, enforcing it up to, and including, making all citizens of the north a para-p0lice force, to enforce Federal pro-slavery laws in 'ALL' free states.
Coolies were the replacement for the African trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Certainly true in Cuba, where many ex-Confederates moved after the Civil War. But then Cuba still had legal slavery, didn't it?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Battalion
Hundreds of thousands (if not millions) were imported into the Western World.
This appears to be too vague to mean anything. How many of them "were imported", when did that happen, what countries in the "Western World" are you referring to, etc. Were they voluntary immigrants, or were they abducted and forced to come into whatever you are willing to tell us is the "Western World"? What documentation do you have for your claims on this?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Battalion
From what I can tell the 1862 & 1869 U.S. laws were no more than a pieces of paper. I've found no evidence of their enforcement.
Actually, they appear to have been highly effective as far as America goes.
For example, the US Minister to Japan applied the 1862 law to "coolies" imported to Hawaii from Japan (and Hawaii was an independent nation at that time). This was in May, 1868 in response to a protest from the Japanese government. The Secretary of State praised his initiative and stood behind the principle, but believed further legislation was required to make the situation crystal clear. The result was a request he made to Congress, which led to the 1868 law you are trying to misinterpert into something it is not.
Presidents from Pierce to Grant spoke out against the importation of coolie labor in their annual messages to Congress. In 1868, the US signed the Burlingame Treaty with China to regulate immigration from China.
This led to an interesting situation. I am not sure about the West Coast, but in the rest of the nation the people most interested in importing coolies all appear to have been in the ex-Confederacy, particularly in the Deep South. During Reconstruction, and particularly around 1868-69, Southern planters were making tremendous efforts to avoid the laws and get around the soon-to-be-passed XV Amendment to the Constitution.
William Creevy of New Orleans (shipping merchant involved in earlier coolie shipments from Cuba, see the 1867 William Roberts affair) tried to claim the Burlingame Treaty voided the 1862 law. He wrote to the Treasury Department claiming so, and William R. Miles went to California representing the Vicksburg Chamber of Commerce to make arrangements to import 10,000 coolies (primarily for sugar cane and cotton plantations along the Mississippi). Sec. of Treasury hung him out to dry, announcing publicly a month later that the 1862 law still held.
Throughout this period, Northerners regarded all attempts to get around the 1862 coolie law and subsequent legislation and treaties as Southern attempts to bring slavery back. Northern papers were adamant about it; Southern papers urged it.
Now, just what is it that you think was going on. Be specific and exact in declaring yourself. Skip the leading question stuff until you first produce some facts and figures to back what you want to say.
Quote:
Originally Posted by battalion
Anyone hung or jailed for shipping coolies?
Argument by throwing out countless questions is pretty weak and proves nothing. You need to supply answers to your own questions to be regarded credibly.
You might want to start with Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation By Moon-Ho Jung.
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
Coolies and their importation does not appear to be the only scheme in which to import cheap labor.
From the book, A Pro-Slavery Crusade, by Ronald T. Takaki:
"The African slave-trade agitation in Louisiana was far more radical than Senator Atkinson's reformist movement aimed at constitutional revision in Georgia. Louisiana fire-eaters like Henry St. Paul, Edward Delong, and James Brigham were engaged in a daring strategy to evade federal laws and import African slaves disguised as "apprentices." Their African apprentice scheme was designed to meet Louisiana's great demand for slave labor, arrest the monopolization of slaves in Louisiana, and check the slave drain from the border states.
The storm center of the agitation for African "apprentices" was the Louisiana state legislature. On January 28, 1858, State Senator Henry St. Paul announced his intention to introduce an African apprentice bill. "The Hotspur of the Senate, Henry St. Paul of New Orleans," the Baton Rouge correspondent of the New Orleans Daily Delta reported, "today went through the preliminary form of initiating the boldest stroke of State policy known in the annals of Southern legislation for half a century. When the notice was read by the Secretary, such of the Senators as were not prepared for anything so utterly astounding gazed around them as though they were under the impression that a mine had exploded. It was the theme of much conversation and varied comments in the House." On March 3 the House passed a bill authorizing James H. Brigham and his associates to import 2500 "free" Africans indentured as apprentices for 15 years. Clearly these Africans would not be "free." The supporters of the bill, the editor of the Baton Rouge Advocate observed, were openly discussing their plan to sell the Africans into "servitude for life...at $500 per head." Commenting on the Brigham bill in his diary, Edmund Ruffin candidly admitted that it was "very obvious that these 'free nergoes' could only be obtained in slaves purchased from Africa." Since the term of apprenticship could be extended from 15 to 50 years, Ruffin concluded, the Louisiana African apprentice system "for all practical purposes" would mean the renewal of the African slave trade.
But the African apprentice bill still required the approval of the Louisiana Senate. On March 12 St. Paul and his colleagues asked the senate to consider the bill. After a 12 to 12 tie vote, Lieutenant Governor Charles H. Mouton, the president of the senate, dramatically gave the bill his blessing. "In giving my casting vote upon this question," he declared, "I feel the responsibility of the act; but having come to the conclusion that the time has arrived for the South to think, act, and to provide for herself, I vote yea." Three days later Colonel B. B. Simms, who had voted for the bill, decided he should consult his constituents before the legislature took further action on the bill. Consequently he moved to postpone the bill indefinitely, and the senate adopted his motion by a vote of 15 to 13. Thus the advocates of the African slave trade almost won the support of the Louisiana legislature."
Louisiana was not the only state to try this scheme.
"In their response to the great demand for slave labor in their state [Mississippi], Henry Hughes and his colleagues designed a scheme for the circumvention of the federal laws against the African slave trade. Like State Senator Henry St. Paul and his fellow African slave trade radicals in Louisiana, they proposed to import Africans as "apprentices" or "voluntary laborers" into Mississippi. On November 19, 1857, State Representative D. S. Pattison introduced a bill for the Charter of the African Labor Immigration Company. Pattison's bill authorized the company to transport Africans to Mississippi. These Africans would be bound and obligated by negotiable labor obligations to work for their masters for 29 years. In a letter to Ethelbert Barksdale, Senator Hughes explained that the Pattison bill violated neither the letter nor the spirit of the federal laws and that its passage would realize a prompt supply of African labor. Although the laws prohibited the importation of slaves, Congress had not outlawed the immigration of Africans voluntarily obligating themselves to labor for a term of years. Thus, Hughes concluded, the scheme to import "voluntary laborers" was legal. Of course these African immigrants, Hughes added frankly, would be slaves in actuality. "Some have asked what shall be done with the African negroes after their terms of service has expired. It is answered that the State has the right and power to fix their status. I propose that they be elevated into slavery..." Senator Hughes and his friends found that the legislature had little real interest in their program to meet Mississippi's labor needs."
Maybe this is why coolies became more 'available?' Because these schemes fell through?
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
Here's an interesting tidbit I just stumbled across. This is from the Crittenden Compromise Resolutions that attempteed to bring a resolution to the divide in the Winter of Secession:
"4. That the laws for the suppression of the African Slave Trade, and especially those prohibiting the importation of Slaves into the United States, ought to be more effectual, and ought to be thoroughly executed; and all further enactments necessary to those ends ought to be promptly
made."
The Peace Conference or "Congress" that was organized by the Legislature of Virginia, meeting on February 4, 1861 came up with this:
"Section 5. The Foreign Slave Trade is hereby forever prohibited; and it shall be the duty of Congress to pass laws to prevent the importation of Slaves, Coolies, or Persons held to Service or Labor, into the United States and the Territories from places beyond the limits thereof."
Regards,
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
UnionBlue, ....
The Peace Conference or "Congress" that was organized by the Legislature of Virginia, meeting on February 4, 1861 came up with this:
"Section 5. The Foreign Slave Trade is hereby forever prohibited; and it shall be the duty of Congress to pass laws to prevent the importation of Slaves, Coolies, or Persons held to Service or Labor, into the United States and the Territories from places beyond the limits thereof."
Regards,
Tim
Massachusetts and one or two other New England states voted against this resolution.
I guess there was money involved.
__________________ POWER & MONEY
"Your New-York bankers and merchants are shrewd people, but I never gave them credit for so much sagacity as when they took the Government Loan. It was not merely patriotism, it was a high stroke of policy. It has saved the Government, and what they will regard as equally important, saved them from a great financial disaster."
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