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The Civil War was inevitable because centralized federal government inevitably grows and becomes richer, more powerful, and more tyrannical - no matter how many safeguards you put in place to try to stop it. At some point the federal bureaucrats & politicians had to make their move to steal the power of self-determination from the States (the principle the nation was founded upon), and as a result the Working Class now sends a huge portion of their paycheck to the level of government that is totally unresponsive to their concerns, and gives the working class back a negligible portion of the lifetime of taxes they pay.
In 1858 or 1859 the price of a prime slave was $1500.00. That was a tremendous amount of money for a plantation owner whose operations could produce large numbers of slaves for the market. By the time of the Civil War plantations had become "people ranches." As lucrative as slave trading was few people were involved in it due to its stigma as being immoral. Thousands of slaves were still being imported from Africa and it was estimated that some 15,000 were imported in one year previous to the Civil War.
All indications were that slavery was not winding down but ramping up. Southerners were so sensitive to its stigma as being an immoral way of life that they had to prove it wasn't by winning the right to continue it. The North had the moral higher ground and the South didn't and to this day they have trouble with that fact alone. Perhaps that is why Southerners still cling together in a way that people in the North don't. I think it would have been a travesty had there not been a war to drive home the message that what they were doing with human lives was immoral. John Woolman said at the onset of slavery that this would forever equate right with Whiteness and not Christianity.
The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 (2 Stat. 426, enacted March 2, 1807) is a United States federal law that stated that no new slaves were permitted to be imported into the United States. It took effect in 1808, the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution.
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In 1820, slave-trading became a capital offense with an amendment to the 1819 Act to Protect the Commerce of the United States and Punish the Crime of Piracy. A total of 74 cases of slaving were brought in the United States between 1837 and 1860, "but few captains had been convicted, and those had retrieved trifling sentences, which they had usually been able to avoid".[15] Nathaniel Gordon, who was hanged in 1862, was the only person to be executed for slave-trading in the United States.[15]
In addition, after the 1808 abolition of the slave trade to the United States, many Americans continued to engage in the slave trade by transporting Africans to Cuba. from 1808-1860, almost one-third of all slave ships were either owned by American merchants, or were built and outfitted in American ports.[16] It is possible that U.S. citizens "may have transported twice as many Africans to other countries such as Cuba and Brazil as they did to their own ports".[16]
It wasn't just "viewed as immoral", the importation of slaves was illegal in 1808-and a capital offense.
It wasn't just "viewed as immoral", the importation of slaves was illegal in 1808-and a capital offense.
What people often fail to grasp is that virtually all of the trans-Atlantic slave traffic in the last decades leading up to the Civil War was to Latin America and the Caribbean, regardless of whose country's flag they flew. It was to this traffic that Presidents Tyler and Van Buren were referring in the link given earlier in this thread. Probably the only two thoroughly documented cases of ships with African slaves landing in the US during this period were the Wanderer and the Clotilda.
The enforcement of the laws against the African slave traffic on the high seas was done almost exclusively by the US and the UK.
What people often fail to grasp is that virtually all of the trans-Atlantic slave traffic in the last decades leading up to the Civil War was to Latin America and the Caribbean, regardless of whose country's flag they flew. It was to this traffic that Presidents Tyler and Van Buren were referring in the link given earlier in this thread. Probably the only two thoroughly documented cases of ships with African slaves landing in the US during this period were the Wanderer and the Clotilda.
The enforcement of the laws against the African slave traffic on the high seas was done almost exclusively by the US and the UK.
As a testimony to the persistence of the illegal slave trade, the 1870 Census reveals the presence, in the United States, of numerous men and women born in Africa well after 1808.
As a testimony to the persistence of the illegal slave trade, the 1870 Census reveals the presence, in the United States, of numerous men and women born in Africa well after 1808.
If by "numerous" the writer means means a statistically significant number he is wrong. The 1870 census tabulated (separately) the black and mulatto population and broke the number down to native and foreign born (not specifically African).
Out of a black population of 4,295,960, a total of 7,239 were born outside the United States. That is .0017 of the black population.
One in seven of these foreign-born blacks lived in New York. Among the former slave states, the largest numbers were 878 in Louisiana and 518 in Texas (it is undisputed that many slaves from the Caribbean islands were transported there in the very early years of the nineteenth century).
Most foreign born blacks lived in what had been free states before the Civil War. In Georgia and South Carolina, the states where abolitionist propagandists always claimed there were the most illegal slave importations, there were 283 and 372 foreign born blacks, respectively.
The mulatto population of the United States was 584,049, of whom 2,415 (.004) were foreign born.
Common sense tells us that of this tiny foreign born black or mulatto population the great majority would have been immigrants from other parts of the Americas who had never been slaves, and that the bulk of that population in the slave states were old people who had come before the international slave traffic was brought under control. Even in the rare cases of slaves being imported illegally in later years it is far more likely that they would have been brought from slave holding regions in the nearby Caribbean than from Africa.
If by "numerous" the writer means means a statistically significant number he is wrong. The 1870 census tabulated (separately) the black and mulatto population and broke the number down to native and foreign born (not specifically African).
Out of a black population of 4,295,960, a total of 7,239 were born outside the United States. That is .0017 of the black population.
One in seven of these foreign-born blacks lived in New York. Among the former slave states, the largest numbers were 878 in Louisiana and 518 in Texas (it is undisputed that many slaves from the Caribbean islands were transported there in the very early years of the nineteenth century).
Most foreign born blacks lived in what had been free states before the Civil War. In Georgia and South Carolina, the states where abolitionist propagandists always claimed there were the most illegal slave importations, there were 283 and 372 foreign born blacks, respectively.
The mulatto population of the United States was 584,049, of whom 2,415 (.004) were foreign born.
Common sense tells us that of this tiny foreign born black or mulatto population the great majority would have been immigrants from other parts of the Americas who had never been slaves, and that the bulk of that population in the slave states were old people who had come before the international slave traffic was brought under control. Even in the rare cases of slaves being imported illegally in later years it is far more likely that they would have been brought from slave holding regions in the nearby Caribbean than from Africa.
I give up. You first argued the census data proved you were right. Now that it doesn't you won't accept its accuracy.
I give up. You first argued the census data proved you were right. Now that it doesn't you won't accept its accuracy.
I accept its accuracy completely and it proves my point absolutely. You were the one posting ridiculous things about daily arrivals of slave ships to the United States with tens of thousands of people per year.
By the way, where in the census did you get the information about the ages and place of birth abroad of these "numerous men and women born in Africa well after 1808"?
Additionally by the way, it may come as news to you that the importation of African slaves was illegal under the laws of every slave state except South Carolina before the federal prohibition of 1808.
I accept its accuracy completely and it proves my point absolutely. You were the one posting ridiculous things about daily arrivals of slave ships to the United States with tens of thousands of people per year.
By the way, where in the census did you get the information about the ages and place of birth abroad of these "numerous men and women born in Africa well after 1808"?
Additionally by the way, it may come as news to you that the importation of African slaves was illegal under the laws of every slave state except South Carolina before the federal prohibition of 1808.
Where did "I" get the information? The scholarship on the illegal slave trade is well over 100 years old. It is such a footnote in the wider study of slavery I am baffled by your insistence of redeeming the integrity of a hand full of molding old bones of illegal slavers resting in 160 year old graves that you would derail a thread about the Civil War. Wouldn't it be swell if we could prove that something wasn't done because it illegal to do so? Now how about those long held myths that there were horse thieves and cattle rustlers in the old west.
Last edited by thriftylefty; 05-19-2019 at 11:22 AM..
If Lincoln hadn't run and been elected, the North might not have contested the secession.
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