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In regards a slave-led freedom movement-- what would they do if they won? In 1863 Lincoln freed the slaves, and The Czar also freed the serfs the same year. The Czar was smart enough to provide each serf with 40 acres and a mule. Did Lincoln really do the slaves a favor?
Don't confuse the Russian Revolution with an oppressed people rising up against its oppressor. "Bolshevik" after all, means "Minority." My peasant farmer family left Russia in 1913 when they saw the rise in the under-handed revolutionary techniques of the Bolsheviks.
The Czar at least had a plan for the serfs to feed themselves, even if it wasn't a great plan. Lincoln had no plan at all and was playing politics, not being altruistic. The American African population is still trying to dig out of the rut of helplessness he left them in. (Like the kid in Christmas Story climbing up the slide, they were starting to make some progress until Johnson, like Santa, kicked them back down the slide.)
There was a short lived movement in the 60s (Stokely Carmichael/Black Power)for the US to concede a whole state to come under black control-- until they realized they would have little economic strength. The sociology & economics wouldn't really support that sort of thing. It was more of a symbolic gesture than a real plan.
You know the old saying about being careful of what you wish for.
Lincoln had a good plan - Reconstruction, supported by 3 additional constitutional ammendments. It was complex, given that he had to deal with bringing half the states back into the union, dealing with the rebuilding of a destroyed south, as well as the independence of millions of just free slaves. In terms of freed slaves - the Freedmans Bureau was created and began providing food, clothing, and shelter to blacks in the south, leased land for them to farm, legislation was passed - the right to vote, protection against discrimination. As fate would have it, he was assasinated and it was left to his successors to carry out that plan and future generations of leaders to promote and shift to self reliance, rather than government dependence. The discussion on how that was successfully carried out is out of scope for this discussion I think.
Alexander had a half-assed plan - Emancipation Reform - the redemption tax was so high that former serfs had to sell everything they grew just to pay the tax. With that, knowing that everything they grew would be lost, serfs simply stopped growing, it caused a famine. It also decreased the control of the Tsar, which could be a good thing but combined with the continued suffering of the peasants along with these competing factions eager to take advantage of the discontent in Russia it finally doomed the Czarist regime.
He was never President of the United States as we know it, either.
It's hair-splitting historical trivia that the Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately free any slaves... but it took off the table, once and for all, any resolution that would allow the seceded states to retain slavery at war's end.
He was never President of the United States as we know it, either.
It's hair-splitting historical trivia that the Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately free any slaves... but it took off the table, once and for all, any resolution that would allow the seceded states to retain slavery at war's end.
It's been observed that the Romans had all the knowledge and technology available to develop the steam engine, but didn't because slave labor was so cheap and made mechanization unnecessary.
In perspective of today's unemployment rate and poverty worldwide, this observation is so sadly true.
In perspective of today's unemployment rate and poverty worldwide, this observation is so sadly true.
When was in the Philippines, right outside my office window the old asphalt of the street intersection was to be replaced with concrete.
They had a guy out there with a hammer and chisel breaking up the old asphalt.
A guy.
With a hammer and chisel.
So for weeks and weeks, I watched his slow progress on a job that a US contractor with a diesel excavator would have completed in a day. But in their economy it was cost-effective.
Slavery still exists today. There is no real reason to think that the US would have followed Europe's lead in slavery any more than it has adopted the metric system.
I know that things like sex trafficking and human smuggling still exist, but I do wonder when plantation-type slavery ended in the U.S.
I was wondering because what if the civil war had never happened? How long would slavery had lasted? What would have been the slaves' options for gaining freedom?
Probably the only nonviolent way out was waiting until the rest of the world was willing to forgo southern resources and apply economic sanctions and isolation as happened with South Africa. I don't see the Royal or US Navy putting up a blockade to forbid southern slave owner from exporting their goods. Frankly I don't see the world jumping in until the aftermath of the Nazi final solution and the beginnings of a global government and court system.
The only non violent action the slaves had was to refuse to have sex and reproduce. The question becomes would the slave owners take in more indentured who were not immediately visually identifiable by bounty hunting slave catchers.
asked: How could the slaves have freed themselves?
answer: Impossible. Slave owners were very aware of this possibility. For a realistic contemporaneous account of plantation life read Frederick Douglass's autobiographies. Slave owners knew that allowing a slave to learn to read and write would be the opening to rebellion because they could communicate across distances.
Plantations were high security, remote jails where the slave owner operated outside the rule of law, they could do anything they wanted including torture, rape and murder. Rebellious slaves were sold and shipped to worse, more remote plantations further South. Northern slaves greatly feared being shipped south.
Mothers were not allowed to keep their infants, they were separated within days of birth, mothers sent back to work in the fields sometimes a days walk away from their babies. Couples were not allowed to marry. Brothers and sisters did not know each other except by rumor. "Family" did not exist. All designed to break up any sense of community among slaves. They did not trust one another, they could not afford to.
You cannot mount a rebellion without trust and communication. They also had no access to weapons and food was guarded by overseers.
Read Frederick Douglass. His writing is very fresh and real. He learned to read on the streets of Baltimore by trading his bread with poor white boys before he got send back to his Maryland plantation. He talks about the difficulty of getting to "free" states because of how far he would have to walk. By learning to write he was able to write a "pass" for himself to use when stopped because no one would believe a black man could have written it. Free people of color were routinely kidnapped even in free states and sold as slaves.
How can people escape when they are so easily identified as a different color than the ruling class?
I know that things like sex trafficking and human smuggling still exist, but I do wonder when plantation-type slavery ended in the U.S.
Chattel slavery ended, debt slavery continued for another hundred years (and grew to envelope poor whites as well). One thing to be very clear about is that the concept of employer owning his labor is deeply embedded in the South, which is the reason unions always had such a hard time being established there.
In the US, there has been a small amount ("small" as far as I know) of trafficking immigrants as slaves, mostly imported by non-American legal residents, and a small amount of using illegal immigrants as slaves.
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