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And it's not that a lesser evil might replace slavery; it's that a lesser evil did replace slavery. All I'm saying is that there may have been a way to avoid that. There was a way, obviously, because they did it in the northern states quite nicely.
Had the white southerners decided to treat the freed slaves as fellow citizens, yeah, the lesser evil of Jim Crow could've been avoided. But they didn't decide to do that, they chose the path of persecution instead. Their choice, no one forced them.
The states of the Old Northwest never had slavery in the first place. You know, the states that supplied the Armies of the Tennessee and the Cumberland; God's elect who trampled the wicked with fire and sword, preceded like the Israelites of old by a column of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night. (Thank you, Bruce Catton). Whoa, I'm getting carried away.
[quote=ovcatto;31593166 the excess slaves could be sold off without any harm to production.
[/QUOTE]
Excess Slaves could be hired out to northern industries which was the case of Frederick Douglas at one time. (Ulrich?) Phillips is another historian (and racist) who doubted that slavery was profitable. He believed it to be economically inefficient moderately profitable to individual slave holders and destructive to the southern economy. I will concede that the general consensus is that slavery is profitable, far be it from me to doubt Stampp. Slavery was profitable not due to the plantation system but due to the artificially high price of slaves. Slavery didn’t really exist in the open market. Slave owners /lawmakers could regulate its profitability with laws like the fugitive act. Was slavery a true economic system or a social system that allowed lower class and upper class people to live together past the point that plantations were profitable?
Last edited by thriftylefty; 09-28-2013 at 06:39 PM..
But I don't see ANYONE with any implicit or not claim that not having the war would have been morally justified if slavery ended anyway. Morality has nothing to do with it. Its a what if question. You have to look at the factual situation at the time and the known changes to come which would have anyway. Then you guess. Or say its a toss up. But nobody is justifying slavery by saying the civil war might not have been needed to eventually end it. Just saying it might have ended anyway with no qualifiers.
Actually, the claim that slavery would have ended soon even without the war is a standard element of the pro-Confederacy, anti-Union diatribes we see here all the time.
Had the white southerners decided to treat the freed slaves as fellow citizens, yeah, the lesser evil of Jim Crow could've been avoided. But they didn't decide to do that, they chose the path of persecution instead. Their choice, no one forced them.
The states of the Old Northwest never had slavery in the first place. You know, the states that supplied the Armies of the Tennessee and the Cumberland; God's elect who trampled the wicked with fire and sword, preceded like the Israelites of old by a column of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night. (Thank you, Bruce Catton). Whoa, I'm getting carried away.
Slavery did exist in the north, much to the disbelief of many. The reason it did not thrive had nothing to do with morality. The north simply didn't offer a climate suitable to the practice. Plantation style farming, complete with slaves, was more suitable and lucrative in much of the south.
Well if that is the case then methinks that you have been doing nothing other than trolling the thread considering these two diametrical posts.
On edit...
By the way, one does not have to be a "southern" to be a right wing revisionist. Buchanan wasn't born in the south but the "states right" pseudo anti-communism fits neatly into the Birchite conservative narrative.
just like you have...................and what's wrong in being a right wing conservative that defends "states rights"???????........compare to left wing liberal who loves a big federal government?
Slavery was profitable not due to the plantation system but due to the artificially high price of slaves. Slavery didn’t really exist in the open market. Slave owners /lawmakers could regulate its profitability with laws like the fugitive act.
That's a strange economic postulate. I can see an argument that the prohibition on the importation of slaves would limit competition and as a result price, but there was more than an adequate supply to meet a supply that was in continuous growth up to the outbreak of the Civil War. Now if you could argue that Slave owners and their political allies set price then you might have some kind of argument but that isn't the case. As for the Fugitive slave act... would you argue that the apprehension of car thieves artificially increases the price of automobiles? I think not. If anything, slavery set artificially depressed wages across the south for both black and white workers. Which is interesting considering the argument that northern wage workers were worse off that slaves.
Quote:
Was slavery a true economic system or a social system that allowed ower class and upper class people to live together past the point that plantations were profitable?
As Genovese wisely points out, slavery was both an economic and social system with both reenforcing the other. As for slavery allowing plantation owners to maintain their lifestyle when exactly prior to the civil war was the production of rice, sugar cane and cotton unprofitable? It wasn't called King Cotton because it wasn't a profitable enterprise.
Actually, the claim that slavery would have ended soon even without the war is a standard element of the pro-Confederacy, anti-Union diatribes we see here all the time.
if it ended in Portuguese , French, British and Spanish colonies without a civil war who had by far more slaves (95% more than the U.S.) and their economies in their colonies depended more on slavery by far than the U.S. South, then why not?
or you want to still argue that our American Slave owners were the worst in the world?.....typical left wing liberal from the North.
Who is this us to which you refer? And what do neo-confederate revisionist (who all too often on these threads run concurrent with Holocaust deniers) have to do with a person who believes in economic and personal liberty, particularly when that economic and personal liberty is only for a select group of people. But if you would like to pursue the question, feel free to direct message me, there is no reason to bog down the thread on personal clarifications.
No, thanks; I'm "calling you (and the agenda of some of those here ) out".
I grew up on a farm, but outside a medium-sixed industrial community, in the Fifties. Our school's history curriculum dealt with slavery early-on, but as it advanced into junior high and high school, also depicted the Civil War as a struggle between agrarianism and industrialism. The post-WW II "consumerist" economy still had a long way to develop, teachers weren't unionized, and the difference between outright slavery and "paternalism" -- be it on a family farm, in a small school district, or in a "company town" wasn't as great. There was a certain "church lady" element who spewed the argument that slaves weren't always abused, but I don't think too many of us bought it,
Beginning around 1990 (Ken Burns Civil War photo-essay was an early proponent) a prominent portion of the (pseudo-)Liberal academic community again began to advance the proposition that the Civil War was fought over slavery -- and only slavery. The zeal and self-righteousness of the most militant abolitionists was downplayed, as was the arrogance of Senators like Massachusetts' Charles Sumner and Pennsylvania's Thaddeus Stevens -- principal architects of the mistakes of Reconstruction.
When the documentary The Promised Land, (a far more positive and constructive depiction of the Afro-American migration from the agrarian South to the industrial North), aired early in 1995 (with Ann Richards and Mario Cuomo as informal hosts, BTW), I heard some grousing from the most hidebound of the local provincials that the Southerners' little sharecroppers' paradise was unfairly depicted, Most of us knew better, but I have little doubt that the other side of the argument was all that was heard in NEA-dominated urban classrooms where no voice is likely to be raised in opposition.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 09-28-2013 at 07:31 PM..
just like you have...................and what's wrong in being a right wing conservative that defends "states rights"???????........compare to left wing liberal who loves a big federal government?
There is nothing wrong with being a conservative defending states rights in theory. The problem arises when we examine what the rights(sic) are that conservatives are defending when they claim states rights. The reality and not the theory is that right wing conservatives have used the states rights argument to keep millions of African Americans first in chattel bondage, then in a status of second class citizenship and now to obscure and falsify the history of both. I hasten to add that there is an uncanny relationship between Holocaust deniers, unrepentant white supremacist, and neo-confederate revisionist in general and on this forum in particular which from my perspective can not be allowed free and unchallenged reign in public discourse.
As for this "big government" liberal, the simple fact is that without a strong federal government slavery would not have been abolished in 1865, nor would the second class citizenship of millions of African Americans ended 100 years later. Those are undeniable facts so it is offensive to this liberal to read attempts by conservative revisionist to denigrate those historical facts. So what is wrong, falsifying history is wrong and I won't be a party to it.
Actually, the claim that slavery would have ended soon even without the war is a standard element of the pro-Confederacy, anti-Union diatribes we see here all the time.
This doesn't make it a justification. It simply makes it a different opinion. Not all 'maybe's' are practical or likely but shouldn't be dismissed in a what if. There are those who believe based on the way the world was going that it would have at least changed because it would have to. Economically it wasn't suitable for the world that was already there. The question then rests on the social and cumulitive history of those who enforced and practiced American southern chattle slavery. How far would they have been willing to bend as the economic world changed? If it had been practical for northern mills to use slaves to run their mills they would have. Their standard was the bottom line, financially. But they had a much more practical system of paying the near slaves a pittance and avioding all the costs. And a ready supply of workers who didn't have any more choice than a slave since if they didn't work the family starved.
What the south did was revive a medieval solution of serfdom, and continued business as usual for a long time but technology made that obsolete in time. I personally think that if it came to it, without a war, southerners would have resorted to serfdom before they would have let go. It could even be dressed up nicely and please a lot of anti-slavery folks. That plot of land would be a rental, and the crops given to pay the rent would be understandable to many. One of the biggest questions among those who opposed slavery was if/when you did, what happens to the slaves. A serf is not precisely a slave, but under controls. And no more dealing with kids too young or grandparents too old, the lesson Northern Industry had learned a long time before.
To really see the whole picture you'd have to also look at the abolitionists and the people who while not active supported them were opposed to the instituion, and were potentially important. If giving each family a piece of ground to be their own, and paying rent, was okay with them then the more radical and active would have been alone, and become a dividing line as radicals always have been.
And they would be radicals, no matter how some other time feels about them because you must not see through a filter of tomorrow but through the minds of those then and an overview of known facts and considered effects. That's what makes it interesting.
Last edited by nightbird47; 09-28-2013 at 07:29 PM..
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