Ben Franklin: Slaveowner to Slavery Abolitionist

BenFranklin.org ^

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "That people act in their own best self-interest is a tenet of capitalism, not Marxism."

So you are an expert on Marxism, and you know just what it says & doesn't say -- I suspected as much.
Years ago I had plenty of Marxist professors and they always insisted everything was just about economic dialectics and class warfare.
In their minds there were no higher ideals, that was all just political clap-trap to paper over true economic & political crass motives.

But I didn't believe them then and don't believe you now.
I think the best of our leaders, like Lincoln, worked in service to their and our highest ideals.

Even Jefferson Davis, for example, while he might be accused of short-sightedness and stubbornness, nobody ever said he was just out to get rich.

[jmacusa]

The North didn’t fight to end slavery. It went to war to preserve the Union and won. The South went to war to preserve an economic system based on the use of slave labor and lost everything.

[jmacusa]

When money walks through the door love flies out the window.

[DrewsMum]

Yep. You nailed it again.

And for Lincoln political power was more important than saving the slaves.

And since ending slavery in the south wasn’t the politically expedient thing to do in 1861 he was tripping over himself trying to show the world he wasn’t an abolitionist.

Then when he needed to rally the troops and needed a better cause for So many men dying, (because his reelection was hanging in the balance) he drug out the slavery card. It was the perfect time too give the north a shot in the arm about the time the time the Confederates were wearing down.

We southerners are well aware of how horrible slavery was.... the problem isn’t that we ignore it was an issue or defend it.

Our issue is the narrative that the north were the slave saviors and the south were racist evil ninnies.

No no no. Not even close.

Do the northern revisionists ever stop and wonder why the freed slaves in the south BY AND LARGE never left.???

Why the southern states have such high percentages of blacks?

Has that ever crossed their minds? Doubtful.

[DrewsMum]

The only thing I was criticizing was your misrepresentation of the facts.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Do the northern revisionists ever stop and wonder why the freed slaves in the south BY AND LARGE never left.???

Because they were poor and uneducated. But a generation later, they were leaving in such numbers during the Great Migration that southern business interests tried to pressure the federal government to stop them and sometimes resorted to beatings and other intimidation to force them to stay.

"Some localities applied more direct measures to keep blacks off the trains. In Macon, Georgia, police forcibly evicted several hundred Chicago-bound blacks from the railroad station. Unsure he could continue to intimidate "surly" blacks without more firepower, the chief of police promptly requested forty rifles to augment the pistols and clubs carried by his men. Outside nearby Americus, police boarded a train and arrested fifty would-be migrants. At Summit, Mississippi, local officials simply closed the railroad ticket office and had the trains pass through without stopping. "The southern white are trying very hard to keep us from the north," understated an anxious Louisianian hoping to leave for Chicago as soon as possible."--James R. Grossman, LAND OF HOPE: CHICAGO, BLACK SOUTHERNERS, AND THE GREAT MIGRATION, 1991

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

H.R. 1989, Passed December 19, 1879:

Whereas large numbers of negroes from the Southern States are emigrating to the Northern States; and,

Whereas it is currently alleged that they are induced to do so by the unjust and cruel conduct of their white fellow-citizens towards them in the South, and by the denial or abridgment of their personal and political rights and privileges: Therefore,

Be it resolved, That a committee of five members of this body be appointed by its presiding officer, whose duty it shall be to investigate the causes which have led to the aforesaid emigration, and to report the same to the Senate; and said committee shall have power to send for persons and papers, and to sit at any time.

[DrewsMum]

How cute.

Obviously I was referring to his blatant disregard of the constitution MANY times during his tenure.

[jeffersondem]

“So you are an expert on Marxism, and you know just what it says & doesn’t say . . .”

I think of myself as a schoolboy.

I did write: “That people act in their own best self-interest is a tenet of capitalism, not Marxism.”

What I’ve written about self-interest is not that much different from what Adam Smith wrote:

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”

[DoodleDawg]

Obviously I was referring to his blatant disregard of the constitution MANY times during his tenure.

For example?

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "I think of myself as a schoolboy."

Or Old Boy, on occasion.

jeffersondem: "What I’ve written about self-interest is not that much different from what Adam Smith wrote:"

But Adam Smith never said economic class interests drove politics & statesmanship.
That took the "genius" of Karl Marx to proclaim.

And again, the proof of it is simply this: jeffersondem will never confess that economic class interests drove 1860 Fire Eaters to declare secession & war on the United States.
But you're only too tickled to report that those same interests drove Lincoln's Republicans' responses.

What's good for the goose?

[DrewsMum]

Do you even know how many abolitionist societies were in the south in 1860?

A heck of a lot more than there were in the north.

[DrewsMum]

Yea gradual emancipation was afforded to states in the north. But immediate emancipation was expected of the south. Where not only would it crash the economy then they would have over 3million unemployed uneducated homeless pennies freed slaves to deal with.

No one except extremists thought THAT was a good idea regardless how you feel about slavery.
Even Lincoln didnt want that!

But revisionists now want to tag halos onto the union Yankees when they were en masse as white supremacist as the south was....
The union held onto their slaves until it wasn’t economically feasible for them anymore.
THAT is the only reason laws changed about slavery in the northern states late 18th early 19th centuries.

Not because they buy and large had a change of heart.
Those things came gradually.

[DrewsMum]

What do you mean?

Anyone with a basic knowledge of u.s history knows this.

I’m not gonna list every person he had arrested in violation of their 1st, 4th, 5th or 6th amendment rights.

I’m sure you have google or a library nearby.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Do you even know how many abolitionist societies were in the south in 1860? A heck of a lot more than there were in the north.

You're going to have to back up that claim. I find it very hard to believe given the fact that even suspected abolitionists were flogged or lynched, and there was censorship of abolitionist literature in the south. In Charleston, in 1835, a mob attacked the post office, burning abolitionist newspapers and pamphlets mailed from the north. In New Orleans, a $20,000 reward was offered for anyone who would kidnap abolitionist Arthur Tappan from the north and deliver him to that city.

It's easy to find more examples of similar southern attitudes toward slavery, so if you're going to claim that that there were more abolitionists in the south than in the north, you're going to have to back that up, or it's going to go down as the 876,457th example of Lost Causers throwing out some imaginary fact, then insisting that it's true and that we can just go look it up. I've been on enough Lost Cause snipe hunts.

[DoodleDawg]

Anyone with a basic knowledge of u.s history knows this.

Or not.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Yea gradual emancipation was afforded to states in the north. But immediate emancipation was expected of the south.

John Quincy Adams' proposal would have phased out slavery gradually, but it was shot down. And you just criticized it for not going far enough.

[jeffersondem]

“Naw, that's only your Marxist training coming out.
Just because your Leftist Academic professors taught you that, doesn't mean it's always true. The fact is that emotions like patriotism are on a different plain from Marxist dialectics. And the proof of it is this, jeffersondem: you never describe your own ancestors that way. In your mind, regardless of what others might tell you, your own ancestors were not motivated by crass economics & politics, but rather by the highest ideals our country can offer, things like liberty, freedom, self government and indeed, self-respect. You freely admit that for your own side, but reserve your Marxist dialectics for the United States.”

You said that because I had said this: "The North fought for what they considered their own best economic and political best self-interest."

Setting aside for a moment your ill-considered remarks about Marxism, I have always tried to be even handed in evaluating motives, North and South.

Read, for the first time, my comment in Post #740 in the thread “On This Day in 1864”:

“The South left the union because they determined it was in their own economic and political best self interest. The same reason the original 13 states left Britain.”

You statements are wrong Brother Joe.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "Read, for the first time, my comment in Post #740 in the thread “On This Day in 1864”:

“The South left the union because they determined it was in their own economic and political best self interest.
The same reason the original 13 states left Britain.”

You statements are wrong Brother Joe."

Wrong, you say? Wow.
And here I was trying to give you credit as a normal human being for natural feelings of idealism and patriotism, at least towards your own ancestors, if not towards mine.
And now you say I'm wrong about that too?
How can that even be, especially in a "mere school boy" that you would become so cynical and indoctrinated with Marxism that you'd deny even the possibility of higher ideals?

You know, I hesitate to try out a new analogy on you, after you so abused my previous "yapping dog", so will try something a little less fearsome -- Exocoetidae, flying fish, live in the water (let's say: water of politics & economics), but on occasion feel compelled to stretch their wings and fly above it all.
Do they ever escape the water?
No, they soon enough come back down to reality.

However, their flight is the single most remarkable achievement of any fish, and more important, it's essential to their survival as a species.
Their 30 seconds airborne gets them above & away from predators and perhaps even provides them briefly a perspective on life in deep waters they could not otherwise see.

So Marx tells us we're all just a bunch of fish in the deep waters of politics & economics.
I'm saying our Founders had a different idea, that however briefly, we could rise above & escape into a different realm.
You know, freedom, liberty, all men created equal, self government, pursuit of happiness, a more perfect Union, truth, justice, the American way -- and faster than a speeding bullet! ;-)

The fact is Americans won't go to war over just economic & political self interests.
Higher values have to be, and always are, at stake.

[jeffersondem]

“And again, the proof of it is simply this: jeffersondem will never confess that economic class interests drove 1860 Fire Eaters to declare secession & war on the United States.”

Read again, for the first time, my comment (May 23, 2018) in Post #740 in the thread “On This Day in 1864”:

“The South left the union because they determined it was in their own economic and political best self interest. The same reason the original 13 states left Britain.”

Your proof just went poof.