Quote:
Originally Posted by Diff1
Having slaves and slaves being a part of an areas economy is totally diffrent!
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I hear what you're saying. If you mean that there's something more evil and sinister about being a slave trader, as opposed to a farmer owning slaves, I tend to agree. Even if times were different back then, I believe you'd have to have a cold heart with extreme indifference to human suffering to be a slave trader. But all slavery is wrong.
I didn't know until this evening that DC was part of the Compromise of 1850, which ended the importation of slaves into DC for selling. Slaves who were already in DC could still be sold. I don't claim to know how much the issue of slavery influenced the DC Retrocession, which split up DC in 1846 and returned land to VA. I know only the basic history of Alexandria being a huge slave trading center.
Just for background info, in 1850, "there were 8,461 free and 4,694 enslaved African Americans" in DC.
dc.gov
And as you already know, slavery in DC ended in April 1862, freeing 3,185 slaves.
Library of Congress
I'm not sure why there's a sense of miscommunication here. If my first post came across the wrong way, perhaps it's because the ongoing debate about whether DC, MD, and DE are southern has been raging for years and never seems to die. I don't have a horse in this race between Atlanta and DC, but I personally have never thought of DC as a southern city. If someone believes DC is southern solely because it once had slavery, I simply remind them that slavery existed in all of the original colonies. From my experience, some people seem surprised to learn that Mass., NY, and PA had slavery. Because nobody talks about northern slavery. Again, I don't consider DC southern simply because it had slavery. You're obviously free to think otherwise.
I think I understand BajanYankee's point that DC didn't give up slavery on its own, (at least, I think that was his point) but history suggests that many northern states gave up slavery merely for practical economic reasons and not because of political liberalism. Unfortunately, as you know, once freed, black people in the north still suffered harsh discrimination.
As for modern DC being southern, researchers at UNC Chapel Hill conducted a series of surveys from 1992-1999 called the Southern Focus Poll, which you may have seen before. (Links are below.)
The poll basically asked people who live in southern states, including in the poll DC, MD, and DE, whether they think they live in the south and whether they identify themselves as being southern.
Washington DC scored the lowest with only 7% of the respondents saying they live in the south while 12% identified themselves as southern. I can't cite numbers specific to the city of Atlanta, but
Georgia scored 97% who said they live in the south while 81% identified themselves as southern. That's probably not very helpful to this thread, however.
For those interested, the links below are short summaries of the poll results, showing the states and the percentages for each state.
DE scored the second lowest with 14% saying they live in the south while 12% identified themselves as southern. And interestingly,
MD came in at 40% who said they live in the south while 19% identified themselves as southern.
UNC-CH surveys reveal where the ‘real’ South lies
Here's a link to a C-D post showing the poll results in greater detail:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/34008860-post347.html
"Perhaps surprisingly, 11 percent of people in Utah, 10 percent in Indiana and slighter fewer people in Illinois, Ohio, Arizona and Michigan claim to be Southerners."
I know the poll data is from 1999, but the survey extended over a period of time from 1992 to 1999. I suppose it's possible that in 2014 more than 12% of the people in DC consider themselves southern.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hjulah
What does the join date have anything to do with this? Not everyone knows about City Data, most people don't, but the ones that do find out about it and join it aren't ignorant or stupid by default of not knowing about a damn website sooner!
Just sayin' son, you sound like an internet narcissist.
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Thank you, Hjulah. But it's fine.
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