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I've never seen proof. But the point I was making is that freedom happened. Slavery, in Jefferson's estate, died slowly with nary a shot fired. Maybe a lesson is in there.
Perhaps, and I am only saying "perhaps", some time in the future we may want to consider that both Washington and Jefferson ended slavery peacefully in their own way. Slavery is gone, of course. I am only suggesting that there may be another sticky issue and we may be wise to use what we have learned from the Civil War and the two founding fathers mentioned. Just as we may want to consider John Adam's example........
I had never heard that. Several people in this thread have said that they believe slavery would have simply outlived its usefulness. I think so, too.
Specifically in dealing with the cotton gin... Slavery didn't help much with cotton production when each seed had to be hand seperated. They made good money on cotton but it took many many hours to clean it and it was not financially possible to plant huge cotton fields since it could not be cleaned in time. Not only was production of cotton limited, but there were predictions that slavery would outlive its advantage soon.
Then the cotton gin turned hours of hand seperation to one person operating a machine. It was possible to grow massive fields of cotton and market them. The predictions of the usefulness of slavery ending were preliminary. Many more hands were needed to harvest and care for those large cotton fields. And it made it feasable to open new lands to them, as cotton basically depleats the soil when grown constantly. At that point there was a massive expansion in the use of slaves.
I know Washington freed every slave, assuming any indentured as well. They were given money to get started with and older people small pensions.
Jefferson died broke and most of his estate was taken by creditors. Great thinker, inventer, writer of speeches. Estate manager, budget expert, not so much. I would assume that most of his slaves were taken by creditors in lieu of debt.
His 'other' family went north, and became 'white' and continued to use the family name. His wife and longtime mistress were half sisters. He's not such a good shining example, though he may have intended to free his slaves but didn't do it in time, or perhaps since he owed so much to so many he couldn't.
With all due respect, the consumer had a large hand at that. They were asked to look for the union label, which translated into decent paying, middle class jobs. This plea was ignored. Every item on every store's shelf receives a label stating the country of origin. I have never witnessed an American taking a peek before making their purchase.
Nobody would love more than I to see good paying, blue collar jobs come back en mass. Knowing the attention span and ability to reason of the average American though, that won't happen (at least not due to consumer sentiment).
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Agree.....these liberals love to complain about outsourcing and blame it all on conservatives but they love their cheap products and buy 90% of their household goods from these companies because they don't want to pay more for products with made in the U.S.A tag.
These liberals complain about outsourcing but love their Apple products. They are all talk and no walk.
Agree.....these liberals love to complain about outsourcing and blame it all on conservatives but they love their cheap products and buy 90% of their household goods from these companies because they don't want to pay more for products with made in the U.S.A tag.
These liberals complain about outsourcing but love their Apple products. They are all talk and no walk.
Far more complex issue than libs vs conservatives. That's really something for the politics and OC subforum anyways.
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.
you mean the same strong federal government that massacre Native Americans and stole their lands?
You mean the same strong federal government that gave unlimited powers to the FBI and people like J Edgar Hoover to break and violate the civil rights of many Americans including blacks in the civil right movement?. The same strong federal government that gives unlimited powers to the CIA to commit crimes overseas and start wars?
You mean the same strong federal government that violated the rights of over 110,000 Japanese-Americans by taking them out of their homes and putting them in prison camps?
You mean the same strong federal government that have violated the constitution over and over?
The same strong federal government that used lies and propaganda to start wars and occupations? the same strong federal government that spies on its own citizens without a court order?
The same strong federal government that has filled the prisons with this silly war on drugs and a large % affects the black community?
the list is very long...............
There is a huge down size to a "strong" federal government and is offensive to me that you cherry pick history and ignore the crimes and huge violations of a "STRONG" Federal government and lecture us about history and falsifying history.
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?
The slave owners started a war to guarantee not only their right to own slaves in perpetuity and to guarantee its permanent expansion into new territories, they also enshrined the right to own slaves in perpetuity in their constitution.
We may disagree as to whether they were uniquely evil, but their actions demonstrate that they may have been uniquely committed to keeping slaves forever.
When there is war we believe there are good reasons and worthwhile outcomes for the cost. IMO The real debate is not one of race and politics but one of humanity. Why did people fight each other over nothing to gain nothing? What fuels the debate is that there had to be something.
Freeing four million Americans from bondage was an acceptable outcome for some even though it took another 100 years for those Americans take one small step up the ladder to equality and coincidentally the states’ rights idea crashed and burned again 100 years later under the Goldwater campaign.
How many times have we debated the cause of the Civil War on this forum and how many time have we posted original source material in support of our arguments and how many times have those arguments been addressed by out revisionist friends... never. Perhaps I would be more patient but I feel like we are on this never ending merry-go-round were we are forced to reargue and reargue the same points ad nauseam, only to have to turn around and rehash the same tired charges, accusations, and strawman arguments. It is truly tiresome. I would abandon the effort if I thought that others, less informed, could be some how inoculated by this nonsense.
My new status quotation:
It isn't politically correct. Just correct.
I love this status.
I always find it amusing that the pro-slavery, pro-Confederate apologists around here love everything their slave-owning heroes did except their explanation for why they were seceding.
I've never seen proof. But the point I was making is that freedom happened. Slavery, in Jefferson's estate, died slowly with nary a shot fired. Maybe a lesson is in there.
Perhaps, and I am only saying "perhaps", some time in the future we may want to consider that both Washington and Jefferson ended slavery peacefully in their own way. Slavery is gone, of course. I am only suggesting that there may be another sticky issue and we may be wise to use what we have learned from the Civil War and the two founding fathers mentioned. Just as we may want to consider John Adam's example........
I had never heard that. Several people in this thread have said that they believe slavery would have simply outlived its usefulness. I think so, too.
Nightbird has a good explanation for why the cotton boom stopped the emancipation movement in the South. Slavery only ended in Virginia with the Civil War.
The assumption that slavery would not have survived because of industrialization rests on two assumptions:
slavery can only be used in an agricultural economy
the South would have industrialized.
Neither of these can be assumed.
We know that virtual slavery has existed and continues to exist where the primary use of slaves is in non-agricultural production. Both the Soviets and the Nazis used slave labor in the 1930s and 1940s. The Chinese have used forced prison labor for decades. The chain-gang system in the South used virtual slave labor. Sweatshops and the sex trade are dependent on slave labor. None of these involve(d) agriculture.
The Southern slaveholders were largely opposed to commerce and industry. You can read it in the Confederate Constitution where any future attempts to assist fledgling industries or build infrastructure (ie, internal improvements like roads/canals) were forbidden. The Confederate Constitution was a blueprint for the creation of what would have become a Third World country dependent upon producing agricultural raw materials for more developed nations through forced labor on large estates. The mind-set of the Southern aristocracy was the mind-set of the 16th century Spanish Conquistadors and/or the 18th century French grandees in Haiti not the mind-set of the 19th century American and British industrialists. Industrialization wouldn't have come to the American South any sooner than it came to Latin America or to the Caribbean.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nightbird47
Specifically in dealing with the cotton gin... Slavery didn't help much with cotton production when each seed had to be hand seperated. They made good money on cotton but it took many many hours to clean it and it was not financially possible to plant huge cotton fields since it could not be cleaned in time. Not only was production of cotton limited, but there were predictions that slavery would outlive its advantage soon.
Then the cotton gin turned hours of hand seperation to one person operating a machine. It was possible to grow massive fields of cotton and market them. The predictions of the usefulness of slavery ending were preliminary. Many more hands were needed to harvest and care for those large cotton fields. And it made it feasable to open new lands to them, as cotton basically depleats the soil when grown constantly. At that point there was a massive expansion in the use of slaves.
I know Washington freed every slave, assuming any indentured as well. They were given money to get started with and older people small pensions.
Jefferson died broke and most of his estate was taken by creditors. Great thinker, inventer, writer of speeches. Estate manager, budget expert, not so much. I would assume that most of his slaves were taken by creditors in lieu of debt.
His 'other' family went north, and became 'white' and continued to use the family name. His wife and longtime mistress were half sisters. He's not such a good shining example, though he may have intended to free his slaves but didn't do it in time, or perhaps since he owed so much to so many he couldn't.
Jefferson the man was not particularly admirable. The myths that surround him are much further from the truth of the kind of individual he was than the myths about Washington or Lincoln.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jackmccullough
The slave owners started a war to guarantee not only their right to own slaves in perpetuity and to guarantee its permanent expansion into new territories, they also enshrined the right to own slaves in perpetuity in their constitution.
We may disagree as to whether they were uniquely evil, but their actions demonstrate that they may have been uniquely committed to keeping slaves forever.
Even before they had actually won their freedom from the US, some Confederates were already spinning plans to conquer Mexico and Central America to add more territory to their slave empire, even though all those countries had outlawed slavery by the 1820s and 1830s. The Confederate Constitution also plans ahead for that eventuality, so it wasn't a fringe idea. Unlike the US in 1788, the Confederates had no largely unsettled area that wasn't already part of a state.
I always find it amusing that the pro-slavery, pro-Confederate apologists around here love everything their slave-owning heroes did except their explanation for why they were seceding.
you keep repeating yourself with the same non-sense and straw man tactics. It has been explain to you many times here that the Civil War was fought for many deep reasons but you keep coming back with silly arguments that we are "confederate apologists" and we "love" the slave owning heroes to kill any debate.
Bleeding heart liberals do that to win any debate, by exaggerating, misrepresenting, or just completely fabricating someone's argument, it's much easier to present your own position as being reasonable, but this kind of dishonesty serves to undermine honest rational debate.
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