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Did the southern society not believe in these words?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The guy who wrote those words owned hundreds of slaves, he didn't believe the words himself.
One additional thing about the idea of absolving southerners because of Africans selling captured Africans - the overseas slave trade was banned in 1808 by the US Congress, so by the time of the Civil War very few slaves born in Africa remained:
"The importation of slaves into the United States was banned by Congress (under Constitutional command) in 1808, yet by 1860, the nation’s black population had jumped from 400,000 to 4.4 million, of which 3.9 million were slaves. The primary reason was natural increase, a distinguishing feature of American-style slavery." The Root
What made the people who established the southern states so cruel and brutal to the enslaved people? They could have simply paid them wages, treat them like the human beings they were,and they would have still prospered. Was there any other country at that time that had such brutality towards slaves?
Brutality existed.
But so did kindness.
Read, "When I was a Slave", which is the stories of dozens and dozens of people who told their stories during the 1930's. FDR asked journalists to go out and find ex slaves and record their stories. The book is available on Amazon and it will surprise you.
Read, "When I was a Slave", which is the stories of dozens and dozens of people who told their stories during the 1930's. FDR asked journalists to go out and find ex slaves and record their stories. The book is available on Amazon and it will surprise you.
Unfortunately, some participants in this thread will probably not be interested in learning any nuances and will not take kindly to the idea that slave owners were individuals too and not all of them treated their slaves the same. Note that my comment is not a claim for the morality of the institution of slavery itself.
I also wonder about the monstrous cruelty of the slavers, and the greed with which they worked them todeath - it is beyond my comprehension that such people can exist, who can rape their workers, sell their children and divide up families. ........................
Actually, greed (self-interest) on the part of the slave owners would have consisted in being careful not to work their slaves to death, because the death of a slave marked the point at which that slave no longer provided any economic usefulness to his or her owner. Now that doesn't mean slaves were treated with kindness and compassion, not at all.
A good analogy would be with draft animals such as horses or mules pulling plows. (Indeed, I don't think most slave owners considered their slaves to be fully human). If the horses and mules were not fed enough and otherwise cared for adequately to keep them alive and strong enough to work, then they were of no use to their owners.
The owners may have been lacking in compassion and in modern standards of humanity, but they were not so stupid as to be unable to consider their own economic self-interest.
Slavery was not the only spark to the Civil War. The slave states shipped cotton to Englanf, and some of the clothing made there was exported to the US. Efforts to levy import tariffs would have hurt them. In fact they may have thought the British would come to their aid.
But the extent of the slavery cruelty..is beyond belief..
Amen to that.. If the cruelty of slavery is really your concern, (and not demonizing the historical South).. maybe get involved w/contemporary, international human rights groups. That would be a more meaningful empathy, than simplistic rants & hand-wringing over the sins of the past. Barbaric slavery is still unfortunately happening in parts of the world.. stay up ~
Amen to that.. If the cruelty of slavery is really your concern, (and not demonizing the historical South).. maybe get involved w/contemporary, international human rights groups. That would be a more meaningful empathy, than simplistic rants & hand-wringing over the sins of the past. Barbaric slavery is still unfortunately happening in parts of the world.. stay up ~
Why get angry at someone pointing out the brutality of Southern slavery and racism? Are we not allowed to do that? What does slavery today in other parts of the world have to do with it? And Jim Crow isn't that far in the past.
Besides the entire Caribbean and all of Africa and India, you mean?
Where slavers raped their own slaves to breed more children and sold them as slaves? I know of no other place. Please provide some citations.
I also don't know why Americans would compare their actions against countries that are poor, colonized, with no democracy or freedom while at the same time extolling freedom and rights and Liberty at home and support slavery.
Amen to that.. If the cruelty of slavery is really your concern, (and not demonizing the historical South).. maybe get involved w/contemporary, international human rights groups. That would be a more meaningful empathy, than simplistic rants & hand-wringing over the sins of the past. Barbaric slavery is still unfortunately happening in parts of the world.. stay up ~
Perhaps and yes that should concern us. But we live in a country where half the country went to war with the other half and a million people died just so the southern states could continue and extend the enslavement of people to other non-slve states. That is this country's history. With what moral authority will you or I go and talk about human rights anywhere, to anyone when many Americans cannot even accept that slavery is the cause of the civil war?
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