Do People in the North Really Not Know about this...?

[ovcatto]

Originally Posted by jackmccullough

I have never heard of someone who criticized the Confederacy claim that the United States was blameless for slavery.

However, no conceivable criticism of the racial policies of the United States government or the economies of the Northern states justifies slavery or the decision of the Southern states to attempt to secede and attack the United States because of their determination to preserve slavery.

Well Jack, you are quite right. It isn't revelatory that New England shipping was built upon the transatlantic slave trade, nor is it a secret that northern banks, New York and Boston in particular, provided not only capital for southern plantation owners but also acted as the central brokers for European cotton buyers. None of that would have changed if the South successfully seceded from the Union.

A little house cleaning.

Slavery didn't develop in the North because it was "expensive" but because their economies were not built on the model of pre-industrial agriculture. The economy of the north was built on trade and shipping, artisan craftsmen and small produce farming, not rice, sugar or cotton which were land and labor intensive.

God, civil war revisionism is so tiresome.

[Brynach]

Originally Posted by ovcatto

Well Jack, you are quite right. It isn't revelatory that New England shipping was built upon the transatlantic slave trade, nor is it a secret that northern banks, New York and Boston in particular, provided not only capital for southern plantation owners but also acted as the central brokers for European cotton buyers. None of that would have changed if the South successfully seceded from the Union.

A little house cleaning.

Slavery didn't develop in the North because it was "expensive" but because their economies were not built on the model of pre-industrial agriculture. The economy of the north was built on trade and shipping, artisan craftsmen and small produce farming, not rice, sugar or cotton which were land and labor intensive.

God, civil war revisionism is so tiresome.

LOL. Well, that's true, true, true.

I think the OP is a little misleading. Is the question whether or not people know there was once slavery in the North as well as the South? That the North participated in the Slave trade and economy? That the war wasn't fight to "free the slaves" even if it did? That our founding fathers were slave owners? Gosh I don't know. Most people don't know history period, and learn only what they are taught in High School for the most part, so is it any surprise that people really "don't know"?

[ovcatto]

Originally Posted by Brynach

[/b]I think the OP is a little misleading.

Purposefully so.

Is the question whether or not people know there was once slavery in the North as well as the South?

That the North participated in the Slave trade and economy?

That the war wasn't fight to "free the slaves" even if it did?

That our founding fathers were slave owners?

Is it taught that the North "participated" in the Slave trade and economy? Yes.

Is it taught that the war wasn't fought to free the slaves? Yes.

Is it taught that the founding fathers were slave owners? Yes, yes and yes again.

Whether they know it, that's a story of another color, but they were certainly taught it, as a randomly look at approved grade school guides for teachers amply revealed.

The charge by the conservative civil war revisionist, like most things these days, drips with irony as thick as molasses because it was the academic work of all left-wing beatnik/hippie radicals who became historians in the 50's and 60's that advanced the Marxian approach to the causes of the Civil War; the war that they reduced to nothing more than a war between two competing capitalist classes. Of course to accomplish that goal, they had to deemphasize any altruistic motivation for the war, ignore the radical abolitionist in Lincoln's own cabinet, the Congress and the Republican Party in general. The concerted effort to cast a jaundice eye on America's slave holding Founding Fathers coincided with other goals but was just as important to the overall narrative nonetheless.

Gosh I don't know. Most people don't know history period, and learn only what they are taught in High School for the most part..

And just as quickly forgotten.