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Why do you ask? How long could a civilized society justify tolerating such an unmitigated evil?
Because there are those who do not believe that nothing short of war could have ended slavery. Apparently they think slavery would have survived somehow.
I think that position is ludicrous given the fact that countries all over the world were in the midst of outlawing slavery. America, I feel, would have followed suite.
But then, my position raises the question of The Confederacy. Presidents Pierce and Buchanan are sometimes criticized for doing too little to stop secession. But secede the states did. With no war, we have two countries to this day.
Why do you ask? How long could a civilized society justify tolerating such an unmitigated evil?
^^^
Quote:
Originally Posted by Listener2307
Because there are those who do not believe that nothing short of war could have ended slavery. Apparently they think slavery would have survived somehow.
I think that position is ludicrous given the fact that countries all over the world were in the midst of outlawing slavery. America, I feel, would have followed suite.
But then, my position raises the question of The Confederacy. Presidents Pierce and Buchanan are sometimes criticized for doing too little to stop secession. But secede the states did. With no war, we have two countries to this day.
The prospect boggles the mind.
The South was going to be overwhelmed by the huge and growing population of the North that was fueled by immigration, and which didn't like slavery (didn't like blacks, either, but that's not the issue), and when that happened, slavery would be swept away. The South couldn't attract immigrants in large numbers because most immigrants refused to compete with slave labor. Europeans chose northern ports of entry. Most ships also came to northern ports because that's where the commerce was. By the 1850s, the Southern slaveholders had already made their section an economic backwater and a social anachronism.
Secession was the only way the South could keep slavery long term, and the North would not ever sanction that. No country willingly gives up its territory without a fight. Whether it happened in 1861 or 1881, there would have been war when the South tried to leave.
The South was going to be overwhelmed by the huge and growing population of the North that was fueled by immigration, and which didn't like slavery (didn't like blacks, either, but that's not the issue), and when that happened, slavery would be swept away. The South couldn't attract immigrants in large numbers because most immigrants refused to compete with slave labor. Europeans chose northern ports of entry. Most ships also came to northern ports because that's where the commerce was. By the 1850s, the Southern slaveholders had already made their section an economic backwater and a social anachronism.
Secession was the only way the South could keep slavery long term, and the North would not ever sanction that. No country willingly gives up its territory without a fight. Whether it happened in 1861 or 1881, there would have been war when the South tried to leave.
Yeah, I kind of think that's how it may have ended - just being overwhelmed by reality and swept aside by society.
That secession thing, though. That's the stickler. Someone was going to get himself shot over that issue.
After the Civil War Blacks were forced to sign labor contracts. Many jurisdictions passed laws that made it illegal if you were not under contract with planter. You might be charged with loiterring or vagrancy and then be sent pick cotton as a convict.
"At the turn of the century the group of black women most subject to sexual exploitation and abuse were those who lived under the system of quasi-slavery known as “peonage.”Under contract labor laws, which existed in almost every southern state, a laborer who signed a contract and then quit his or her job could be arrested. The horrors of this system of forced labor (as well as the equally horrific system of convict labor) are detailed in this stark, turn-of-the-century personal account of life under the “peonage” system in the South, published in the Independent magazine in 1904. Although this account by an African-American man did not focus especially on the sexual exploitation suffered by his wife and others, his report described how his wife was forced to become a mistress to the plantation’s owner."
"I went off to a neighboring plantation and hired myself out to another man. The new landlord agreed to give me forty cents a day and furnish me one meal. I though that was doing fine. Bright and early one Monday morning I started for work, still not letting the others know anything about it. But they found it out before sundown. The Captain came over to the new place and brought some kind of officer of the law. The officer pulled out a long piece of paper from his pocket and read it to my new employer. When this was done I heard my new boss say “I beg your pardon, Captain. I didn’t know this ****** was bound out to you, or I wouldn’t have hired him.”So I was carried back to the Captain’s. That night he made me strip off my clothing down to my waist, had me tied to a tree in his backyard ordered his foreman to give me thirty lashes with a buggy whip across my bare back, and stood by until it was done. After that experience the Captain made me stay on his place night and day—but my uncle still continued to “draw” my money."
"And I stayed I signed a contract—that is, I made my mark—for one year. The Captain was to give me $3.50 a week, and furnish me a little house on the plantation—a one-room log cabin similar to those used by his other laborers."
These excerpts are from long after the Civil War. This doesn't sound like freedom to me. Slavery was something that was legislated in over 200 years. I would argue that the legislation has never stopped it is just very slow and we don't notice it.
Last edited by thriftylefty; 09-30-2013 at 03:31 PM..
Without going back and reading almost 200 poets, it seems to me that slavery would have lasted quite a bit longer had there been no Civil War. The secession was not about a threat to end slavery in the slave states, but about prohibiting slavery in the new territories to the west. The existing slave states could have retained slavery, without secession and/or war, as long as the traffic would bear, and there was no strong sentiment in the capital for abolition at that time.
Of course, if the US had retained slavery for many more years or decades, the term "Rogue" and "Pariah" would have arisen much sooner in international affairs and diplomacy, and the issue would have needed to have been faced sooner or later. But the South's decision to secede and foment a war merely hastened the abolition.
But once the Emperor of Brazil had struck it down by edict in the last country do so (about a decade later), the future of slavery in the New World would be pretty much a done deal, with war very likely unnecessary.
Bad compared to what? When you are born to slaves, live as a slave, what exactly do you have to compare your life with? Oh, life wasn't so bad, master gave us scraps from the table and didn't beat us like da other slave masters? Heard of Stockholm syndrome???
This contains a misperception. Slave owners did not feed their slaves. Slaves were assigned a small parcel of ground to grow their own food, after all the other work was done. They were also sometimes allowed to gather edible plants from uncultivated areas. Slaves did not share their master's diet. They would have been overjoyed to get table scraps, but those went to the dogs.
Why do you ask? How long could a civilized society justify tolerating such an unmitigated evil?
Because most of the people on the "left" side of this discussion subscribe to the broad-scale "remedy" of additional regulation, and have to insist on centralized (Federal) control (a/k/a "Big Brother/Sister); they are addicted to the drug of Absolute Power which makes theircharges of "greed" sem tame by comparison, Make no mistake about it; they are as zealous and self-righteous as the most ilitant abolitionists of the Niineteenth Century, and they seek a system as one-siided as that which created Reconstruction.
They seek to link anyone taking an opposite, or even a more-moderated view with Holocaust deniers, blatant racists, and the most strident of the Relgous Right. It's a simplistic view peddled to a mindset which, hopefully, will "swallow fewer arguments whole" as another generation matures, but with the continued debunking of the Global Warming Hysteria (as opposed to a measured sudy of climate change) it's the biggest recruiting poster that Barry-O, Al Gore, and the rest of the WonderPets have left.
This contains a misperception. Slave owners did not feed their slaves. Slaves were assigned a small parcel of ground to grow their own food, after all the other work was done. They were also sometimes allowed to gather edible plants from uncultivated areas. Slaves did not share their master's diet. They would have been overjoyed to get table scraps, but those went to the dogs.
Although some planters didn't want their slaves to be too independent, I have read primary sources where slaves had access to a gun to hunt. It was a given that whatever stores the plantation owner had , ham, bacon, or liquor, slaves were going to pilfer it at whatever risk to themselves, some owners looked the other way.
Theres an old slave song that goes " no more peck of corn for me" "no more pint of salt for me"
Pete Seeger stole the melody and turned it into "We shall overcome"
Last edited by thriftylefty; 09-30-2013 at 05:34 PM..
"Would slavery have ended without the Civil War? "
Maybe, but most likely it would go the way the rest of the world was going during that period. If the English, French, Spanish, then the Northern states finally gave up slavery so would the Southern United States. Slavery - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Whats seems odd is the African and Middle Eastern countries that only officially outlawed Slavery in the 1960s to the 1990s. Especially in Muslim countries, where it still really exists today.
"In Mauritania, despite slave ownership having been banned by law in 1981, hereditary slavery continues.[32] Moreover, according to Amnesty International:
"Not only has the government denied the existence of slavery and failed to respond to cases brought to its attention, it has hampered the activities of organisations which are working on the issue, including by refusing to grant them official recognition".[33]
Imam El Hassan Ould Benyamin of Tayarat in 1997 expressed his views about earlier proclamations ending slavery in his country as follows:
"[it] is contrary to the teachings of the fundamental text of Islamic law, the Quran ... [and] amounts to the expropriation from Muslims of their goods; goods that were acquired legally. The state, if it is Islamic, does not have the right to seize my house, my wife or my slave.""
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