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Old 09-26-2013, 03:21 PM
 
31,387 posts, read 36,897,598 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jasper12 View Post
I have recently read a book, oral history from slaves, written in the 30's. There were no stories about horrific abuse, most of the slaves talked about being well cared for, having new clothing, food prepared, holidays.
I've read quite a few slave narratives maybe I just missed the wonderful recollections of children who were slaves during their enslavement when they were 8 to 10 years old.

Got to go to a meeting but shall return to deal with these flights of revisionism.
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Old 09-26-2013, 03:24 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jasper12 View Post
I have recently read a book, oral history from slaves, written in the 30's. There were no stories about horrific abuse, most of the slaves talked about being well cared for, having new clothing, food prepared, holidays.

Oen talked about how he felt it was easier, he always had food, a place to live, money for extras. Some of the former slaves almost seemed nostalgic.

It was a different perspective than we usually see or hear about. I was really prepared for a book about abuse. It was obvious the writers were asking the elders about abuse, trying to find the 'evil' we all hear about, but in the book, the elders usually said, 'sure, that happened if you were bad', and they skipped it.

I don't know if slavery would have ended. It seems like some slaves were content.

The book is free on Kindle, life of a slave...
I agree. Though Django Unchained painted an ugly picture.
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Old 09-26-2013, 03:34 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by waviking24 View Post
I agree. Though Django Unchained painted an ugly picture.
Oh for god's sake!

Perchance some of you fine folks can figure out away to white wash the 19 major slave revolts, the 13,000 Africans who fought for the British, or the number of fugitive slaves since the folks were so content with their servitude.

methinks that some folks have watch one too many replays of Gone with the Wind.
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Old 09-26-2013, 04:04 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ark90 View Post
Why would you need slaves if you had a tractor?
Interesting question. It would not be until 1947 that a commercially viable mechanical cotton picker was put on the market.
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Old 09-26-2013, 04:08 PM
 
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Jefferson Davis promised Pope Pius IX that he could end it
within 10 years.
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Old 09-26-2013, 04:17 PM
 
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The overseer was silent for a moment, looking at the girl, and then said, 'That won't do; come out here.' The girl arose at once, and walked towards him. She was about eighteen years of age. A bunch of keys hung at her waist, which the overseer espied, and he said, 'Your father locked you in; but you have got the keys.' After a little hesitation, she replied that these were the keys of some other locks; her father had the door-key.

Whether her story was true or false, could have been ascertained in two minutes by riding on to the gang with which her father was at work, but the overseer had made up his mind.

'That won't do,' said he; 'get down.' The girl knelt on the ground; he got off his horse, and holding him with his left hand, struck her thirty or forty blows across the shoulder with his tough, flexible, 'raw-hide' whip (a terrible instrument for the purpose). They were well laid on, at arm's length, but with no appearance of angry excitement on the part of the overseer. At every stroke the girl winced and exclaimed, ''Yes, sir!' or 'Ah, sir!' or 'Please, sir!' not groaning or screaming. At length he stopped and said, 'Now tell me the truth.' The girl repeated the same story. ''You have not got enough yet,' said he; 'pull up your clothes-lie down.'

The girl without any hesitation, without a word or look of remonstrance or entreaty, drew closely all her garments under her shoulders, and lay down upon the ground with her face toward the overseer, who continued to flog her with the raw-hide, across her

Slave quartersnaked loins and thighs, with as much strength as before. She now shrunk away from him, not rising, but writhing, groveling, and screaming, 'Oh, don't, sir! Oh, please stop, master! Please, sir! Please, sir! Oh, that's enough, master! Oh, Lord! Oh, master, master! Oh, God, master, do stop! Oh, God, master! Oh, God, master!'
Frederick Olmsted
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Old 09-26-2013, 04:24 PM
 
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What was true in 1839 is as true to today.

"Two millions seven hundred thousand persons in these States are in this condition. They were made slaves and are held such by force, and by being put in fear, and this for no crime! Reader, what have you to say of such treatment? Is it right, just, benevolent? Suppose I should seize you, rob you of your liberty, drive you into the field, and make you work without pay as long as you live, would that be justice and kindness, or monstrous injustice and cruelty?

Now, everybody knows that the slaveholders do these things to the slaves every day, and yet it is stoutly affirmed that they treat them well and kindly, and that their tender regard for their slaves restrains the masters from inflicting cruelties upon them. We shall go into no metaphysics to show the absurdity of this pretence.

The man who robs you every day, is, forsooth, quite too tenderhearted ever to cuff or kick you! True, he can snatch your money, but he does it gently lest he should hurt you. He can empty your pockets without qualms, but if your stomach is empty, it cuts him to the quick. He can make you work a life time without pay, but loves you too well to let you go hungry. He fleeces you of your rights with a relish, but is shocked if you work bareheaded in summer, or in winter without warm stockings. He can make you go without your liberty, but never without a shirt. He can crush, in you, all hope of bettering your condition, by vowing that you shall die his slave, but though he can coolly torture your feelings, he is too compassionate to lacerate your back—he can break your heart, but he is very tender of your skin.

He can strip you of all protection and thus expose you to all outrages, but if you are exposed to the weather, half clad and half sheltered, how yearn his tender bowels! What! slaveholders talk of treating men well, and yet not only rob them of all they get, and as fast as they get it, but rob them of themselves, also their very hands and feet, all their muscles, and limbs, and senses, their bodies and minds, their time and liberty and earnings, their free speech and rights of con-
science, their right to acquire knowledge, and property, and reputation;—and yet they, who plunder them of all these, would fain make us believe that their soft hearts ooze out so lovingly loward their slaves that they always keep them well housed and well clad, never push them too hard in the field, never make their dear backs smart, nor let their dear stomachs get empty.

But there is no end to these absurdities. Are slaveholders dunces, or do they take all the rest of the world to be, that they think to bandage our eyes with such thin gauzes? Protesting their kind regard for those whom they hourly plunder of all they have and all they get! What! when they have seized their victims, and annihilated all their rights, still claim to be the special guardians of their happiness! Plunderers of their liberty, yet the careful suppliers of their wants? Robbers of their earnings, yet watchful sentinels round their interests, and kind providers of their comforts? Filching all their time, yet granting generous donations for rest and sleep? Stealing the use of their muscles, yet thoughtful of their ease? Putting them under drivers, yet careful that they are not hard-pushed? Too humane forsooth to stint the stomachs of their slaves, yet force their minds to starve, and brandish over them pains and penalties, if they dare to reach forth for the smallest crumb of knowledge, even a letter of the alphabet!

It is no marvel that slaveholders are always talking of their kind treatment of their slaves. The only marvel is, that men of sense can be gulled by such professions. Despots always insist that they are merciful. The greatest tyrants that ever dripped with blood have assumed the titles of "most gracious," "most clement," "most merciful," &c., and have ordered their crouching vassals to accost them thus. When did not vice lay claim to those virtues which are the opposites of its habitual crimes?"
Rev. Theodore Weld and Angelina and Sarah Grimke 1839
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Old 09-26-2013, 04:24 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ovcatto View Post
Wow, sort of like being in Flossenbürg was so much better than being at Dachau



Simply ineffable... considering Hollywoods copious catalogue of titles from Birth of a Nation up to and past Gone with the Wind.



LMAO!!!! I'm just saying, not all slaves were treated equally, it all depended on their masters and what empire. The Portuguese and the Egyptians were brutal slave masters and don't get me started on the Romans, those M.F.'s perfected the nailing on the cross to an art form.

Im just saying, If I had to be a slave in those times , send me to the U.S.
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Old 09-26-2013, 04:28 PM
 
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A compilation of eye witness reports and accounts by slave owners themselves regarding the treatment of slaves in the American south.

American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of A Thousand Witnesses (1369), Rev. Theo. Weld, et al, Editors
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Old 09-26-2013, 05:01 PM
 
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Originally Posted by Linda_d View Post
IMO, slavery in the US would NOT have ended without the Civil War because slavery wasn't just an economic system, it was a system of social control.
Slavery would certainly have ended anyway. But only because it was becoming economically unviable, and was so morally repugnant that the dwindling minorities of owners could not resist the modern outrage against it. And slavery wasn't about social control either. Blacks weren't brought over here from Africa just so they could be socially controlled for the sake of social control. Rather, social control was necessitated to uphold the slave system. And during Jim Crow, it prevented blacks from access to political power. What further discredits this notion is the fact that Northerners were just as prejudiced against blacks as the South was. They "socially controlled" blacks too.

The social control argument is what American Leftists like to emphasize so that they can bolster their silly arguments that America's free market economic system is intrinsically racist.

Last edited by Led Zeppelin; 09-26-2013 at 05:46 PM..
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