Posted on 03/07/2017 10:24:40 PM PST by Timpanagos1
“However, leaving them in place gives you a chance to discuss treason and its implications.”
It’s what a few idiotic Brits do when discussing the American Revolution. They have their twins over here with the Confederacy bashers.
The British Empire had declared the Americans as subjects who had nothing to do with the government of the Empire. They had no recognition in Parliament. American citizens attacking the Union were traitors pure and simple. The slavers had controlled the nation since the beginning in one way or the other.
There is nothing to defend in the Confederacy, those who fought for it because they were drafted might have an excuse but the zealots who brought it on have none. Rebellion was motivated pure and simple by the desire to protect slavery, a economic system outdated for a thousand years. There was nothing noble about the Lost Cause.
The Democrat Party was as evil then as now.
” a economic system outdated for a thousand years. “
So Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and a lot of other prominent early Americans were pretty badly out of date.
The Crown issued two emancipation proclamations during the rebellion- I’m curious if that means that wrong side won the Revolution in your opinion.
The Founders who held slaves knew it was outdated and never justified it on moral grounds. Note the Declaration blamed the system on the British. And there were constitutional means to act against it twenty years after ratification. Many of these men, if not most, freed their slaves upon death. So many were freed that the state of Virginia required a freed slave to leave the state. This likely acted to maintain the institution because freed slaves did not want to buy freedom at the expense of loosing all their friends and relatives.
Initially slaveholders did not have the same attitude towards their slaves and treated them fairly well much like family. The killing grounds came with the cotton fields in the deep South.
What gives a nation its identity is three things: borders, language and culture. Our history falls under culture and is our shared common heritage. All of the Civil War, North, South, Black, White is part of our shared heritage. Tampering with the past is fatal to the future. But mainly, I want to try out my new tag.
“and never justified it on moral grounds. “
Well they practiced it. So evidently something overruled whatever qualms that they might have had.
“Many of these men, if not most, freed their slaves upon death”
I can only think of Washington. And in that case the larger portion of his slaves belonged to Martha and weren’t freed.
“The killing grounds came with the cotton fields in the deep South.”
Do you have a link? I’ve never heard of anything remotely like “killing grounds” in North America. Slaves were very expensive. When there was dangerous work to be done, like the canal building in New Orleans, they would hire Irish laborers. They weren’t about to risk their slaves.
There is no question that the Founders believed slavery was on the way out and spoke of its odious features on many occasions. That is why the constitution provided means to abolish it. Of course, some of them were always anti-slavery such as Hamilton and Adams. The hesitation to free them had several some reasonable justification, the owners felt some degree of responsibility for their future well-being and believed they were better off in place. They knew that racism was throughout the country and maybe even worse in the North due to the fact that Southerners had personal ties to their slaves.
Few in our early years explicitly supported slavery as morally right but the owners had a variety of reasons not to free the slaves. It was not a system that was particularly financially rewarding. Only after the cotton gin was invented did immense profits begin. It was after that that the institution was defended as a positive good. By the time of the civil war many slaveowners did not even believe they were fully human.
Jefferson, for the most part was indebted to the British banks and barely limped along for decades. At that time the “owners” were actually owned by the British through finances.
Washington stipulated that his slaves be freed after the death of Martha. Jefferson did little to coerce his slaves to stay at Monticello and did not seek their return (especially if they were Hemings) should they flee. He was, by all accounts, a kind Master and most of of his slaves may have felt better about staying with him rather than facing the dangers of freedom. He allowed them to hire out their labor when not needed and even paid some of them himself.
It is true that the building of levees along the Mississippi and other particularly dangerous efforts were done by the Irish not owned by the ruling class. There were other reasons not to allow the slaves to do that work. The Plantation System was notorious for wasting the labor power of slaves using them for non-financially rewarding tasks.
However, working the cotton fields was not a easy task and the slaves elsewhere feared being sold to the South. You are also correct in describing the incentive of the Masters to keep their slaves healthy and alive. But working them to death was not unknown particularly in the Caribbean area where the working life of a slave was about seven years if I remember correctly.
Hopefully now Louisianans will never elect another Landreiu to anything above Dog Catcher.
If slavery was indeed on its way out, destined to fade on its own for economic reasons (which it was), there was no need for Lincoln to appease the radical abolitionist wing of his party with an emancipation proclamation.
Many Americans, including a sizeable minority of southerners, felt that preserving the Union was a cause worth fighting and dying for. None but the radical fringe thought that abolishing slavery was a cause worthy of a civil war where 600K+ of their sons would die.
“Washington stipulated that his slaves be freed after the death of Martha. “
This applied to the slaves that Washington brought into the marriage, which appear to have numbered 36, but not to Martha’s due to a peculiarity of inheritance law IIRC.
Martha brought 85 slaves into the marriage, referred to as ‘dowry slaves’. At the time of George’s death they owned 318 slaves, one of the larger slaveholdings of the pre-cotton era. I don’t know what number of the 318 were considered ‘dowry slaves’ since the children of the original 85 may well have been added to the total.
Upon George’s death Martha freed his slaves, but her own slaves remained and upon her death went to her grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, whom she and George had raised after her son, GWP’s father, died right after the battle of Yorktown.
GWP Custis built Arlington House on the heights across from Washington DC. He died in 1857 and his will requested that his 200 slaves be freed when his debts were paid and no later than five years after his death. So this could be said to be the freeing of the last of the Washington slaves if we include Martha’s.
Lincoln of course entered the war thinking it would over in months. Unlike the veterans of the Mexican war he had no experience to guide him. And once he committed troops it took on a life of its own. Wars being much easier to get into than out of, and very often leading somewhere other than where their architects expect them to go.
Wouldn't that be the house that came to be known as the Lee Mansion? The one General Lee moved out of when he took command of the Army of North Virginia? It having come to him through his wife's family? He never returned to it. They say he caught a glimpse whilst traveling nearby on a train once. Of course, the house and grounds were later appropriated by the Union and became the burial ground for many of the soldiers who died fighting Lee's army. Now known as Arlington Cemetary.
>>>However, leaving them in place gives you a chance to discuss treason and its implications<<<
Have the Calexit supporting Liberals been accused of Treason?
If they were, the howling would never stop.
These politically correct conservatives are so convinced of this that they happily go along every demand made by black race-baiters and their radical allies, even if it means standing alongside BlackLivesMatter types in a rally to tear down a Confederate Flag or a statue of General Lee.
The war came because the South feared Lincoln. Secession started before he was sworn in. The death and destruction should be laid at the feet of the slavers. Lincoln was determined to preserve the Union as he should have. Hell, Andy Jackson would have done the same and he was a slaveowner.
The Emancipation Proclamation was designed to weaken the South and it did. It increased the pressure on the Slaver government and weakened the military. Slaves in the states still in the Union were not freed. Apparently there were about 220,000 Southerners who joined the Union military forces.
They all believed the war would be short. But the South’s military men were too good and the North’s power too strong for that to happen. It was an industrial war the South was bound to lose since most of its capital was invested in slaves.
Did they violate their oaths of office and attack their own nation?
The war was started by the South and initially was not being fought by Union forces because of slavery. Of course, with the South it was the ONLY reason to fight. Defending the Union was noble to the nth degree, attacking it not so much and it was extremely stupid.
Censorship of history is not good but neither is glorification of ignoble motives.
The situation in 1860 could have evolved in several directions but the Slavers demanded their war and their folly was amply rewarded. It is unfortunate that so many non-slaveowners were killed defending the Ruling Class’s slaves.
>>>Did they violate their oaths of office and attack their own nation?<<<
No, the CA Commies are just in the planning stages.
My Southern friends still call it The War of Northern Aggression even though General Lee did try to invade the North on a couple of occasions to force a quick end to the War. Didn’t quite work out as he planned...
I don’t argue with them. My Family didn’t come here until the 1890’s and we ended up in Brooklyn.
All that being said, the effort to simply erase inconvenient History is quite unsettling to me.
It used to be called the Custis-Lee Mansion when I was growing up in Arlington. I think they are calling it Arlington House these days. The Lees had been living there on and off when they weren’t stationed at various Army posts around the country. Mrs Lee inherited the property when her father died.
One of the janitors at my grade school told me that when his mother was very young she had been one of Mrs Lee’s house servants- he was proud of his connection to the Lees and it impressed me.
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