COLLEGE STUDENT REACTS | Facts About Slavery Never Mentioned In School | Thomas Sowell

YouTube ^ | May 20, 2023 | LFR Jojo

[grundle]

COLLEGE STUDENT REACTS | Facts About Slavery Never Mentioned In School | Thomas Sowell

[Fiji Hill]

Wow. This kid is discovering truth and honesty (which may well place him firmly on “our side”)...and you’re badmouthing him, calling him names.

Your pitiful arrogance is on full display.

I should have made myself more clear. I'm not badmouthing him at all. He does indeed seem brilliant and eager to learn and to consider opposing viewpoints. What I'm badmouthing is the government schools that failed to teach him some basic geographical facts that everyone should know.

[moovova]

Thank you...and I apologize

Yep...public schooling was the problem. The kid was done a disservice. And, I’ll be honest...I’m 71 and knew nothing about the Corwin Amendment. That really ticks me off.

[Political Junkie Too]

These are interesting points, but the fact is that the Constitution was only the form of government, not the admission into the Union.

The Founding Document of the United States was the Declaration of Independence, where the states "mutually pledge[d] to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." This is an unbreakable pledge between the several states to each other.

Rejecting the Constitution as the form of government does not mean they leave the Union. It means, as Madison later wrote, that they return to the state of nature that existed before the Constitution, but not before Independence. We can debate what that is, but the simplest (and least disruptive) is that they become territories with their own local governments -- but still possessions of the United States.

-PJ

[FLT-bird]

One reason you never heard of it is because the way DiogenesLamp tells it, it's all lies. The truth is: Corwin-type amendments were first proposed in December 1860 by, among others, Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis. Davis promised that Republicans accepting his proposal would prevent Mississippi from declaring secession. But Republicans rejected Davis's proposals, and others similar (i.e., Crittenden), because they expanded slavery beyond the existing limits on it. The result was Mississippi and other slave-states declared secession, and formed their own Confederacy, which provided every protection of slavery they could ask for. These Confederate constitutional protections included: No Confederate state or territory could abolish slavery. No Confederate state or territory could restrict slaveholders who "shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property". Confederate states could import slaves from the United States. Article I Section 9(4): "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.[13]" So, not only was abolition impossible in the Confederacy, but so were any restrictions "impairing the right of property in negro slaves." Given the Confederacy's total protection of slavey, there was no way the Union could offer the Deep South a "better deal". Nor did they try to. The Corwin amendment was not intended to lure Confederate states back into the Union, but rather to reassure Union Border Slave-States that existing laws would not be changed. Corwin simply said there would be no national laws abolishing slavery in states where it was legal, just as there had been none since the Constitution was ratified in 1788. Corwin did not prevent states from continuing to abolish or restrict slavery as they saw fit. Corwin did not prevent Federal government from abolishing slavery in US territories or in Washington, DC. Corwin did not prevent the US Supreme Court from defining the human rights of slaves. As Lincoln said in his March 4, 1861 Inaugural Address, he did not oppose Corwin because it made no changes to the Constitution as Lincoln understood it. Finally, the necessary support for Corwin in Congress came from 100% of Democrats joined by a minority of Republicans (RINOs). The majority of Republicans in Congress opposed Corwin. Kentucky, Rhode Island, Maryland and Illinois ratified Corwin. All but Kentucky later rescended their ratifications.

The problem with this, is that its all lies the way BroJoeK tells it. The truth is, the Northern was willing to pass a constitutional amendment to expressly protect slavery effectively forever.

As for the Confederate Constitution". . . delegates from the Deep South met in Montgomery, Alabama, on February 4 [1861] to establish the Confederate States of America. The convention acted as a provisional government while at the same time drafting a permanent constitution. . . . Voted down were proposals to reopen the Atlantic slave trade . . . and to prohibit the admission of free states to the new Confederacy. . . .

Get it? States did not have to have slavery to join the CSA and states that were in the CSA were free to abolish slavery. They could not deny transit of their territory by citizens of other Confederate States with their slaves, but they could ban it within their own state if they so chose. This was no different from the law in the United States at the time after the Dred Scott decision. Similarly, allowing slaves to be traded between states but not allowing the Atlantic slave trade was no different from the law in the US prior to 1860. The Confederate Constitution simply did not differ from the US Constitution in this regard.

"The resulting constitution was surprisingly similar to that of the United States. Most of the differences merely spelled out traditional southern interpretations of the federal charter. . . .

". . . it was clear from the actions of the Montgomery convention that the goal of the new converts to secessionism was not to establish a slaveholders' reactionary utopia. What they really wanted was to recreate the Union as it had been before the rise of the new Republican Party, and they opted for secession only when it seemed clear that separation was the only way to achieve their aim. The decision to allow free states to join the Confederacy reflected a hope that much of the old Union could be reconstituted under southern direction." (Robert A. Divine, T. H. Bren, George Fredrickson, and R. Hal Williams, America Past and Present, Fifth Edition, New York: Longman, 1998, pp. 444-445, emphasis added)

The Corwin Amendment was named after Republican Senator Thomas Corwin. It was not only backed but was in fact orchestrated by Lincoln. It was also backed by Republican William Seward. Lincoln ensured its passage in 5 Northern states and doubtless it would have been ratified by more had the original 7 seceding states agreed to it. And yes, it was most certainly intended to lure them back into the US. They turned it down because slavery was not the Southern states' primary concern.

[FLT-bird]

If slavery never existed would there have been a Confederacy and Civil War? No.,/p>

I disagree. Do a thought experiment. Suppose for sake of argument, that the slaves had been freed and were instead sharecroppers or wage laborers as they were after the war. They still had their labor to sell and there was a market for labor to produce cash crops so some arrangement would have been worked out - as indeed it was after the war.

So now that the slaves are all free in our thought experiment, do the Southern states not still need low tariffs? Do the Northern states not still want high protective tariffs to fatten their profit margins as they get to raise prices and increase sales? Do the Northern states no longer use their majority in Congress to vote themselves the lion's share of the federal budget? Of course they do. Just as Southerners still bitterly resent it.

All the key motivating factors are still there for the Southern states to secede and for the Northern states to not want to see their cash cows depart.

[FLT-bird]

These are interesting points, but the fact is that the Constitution was only the form of government, not the admission into the Union. The Founding Document of the United States was the Declaration of Independence, where the states "mutually pledge[d] to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." This is an unbreakable pledge between the several states to each other. Rejecting the Constitution as the form of government does not mean they leave the Union. It means, as Madison later wrote, that they return to the state of nature that existed before the Constitution, but not before Independence. We can debate what that is, but the simplest (and least disruptive) is that they become territories with their own local governments -- but still possessions of the United States.

Woah! Without the constitution, there no longer is a union between the states. They all agreed the Articles of Confederation weren't working out for them so they wanted reforms to the articles. There's no guarantee the states would stay together. They went to the trouble after all of having EACH state recognized by name as sovereign in the 1783 treaty of Paris which ended the war of secession from the British Empire.

The Declaration of Independence was just that. The states declared their common purpose to seek independence. It was an alliance that was not guaranteed to last once the object - ie Independence - had been achieved.

No way are sovereign states "possessions" of the United States. The states are sovereigns individually. They never agreed to surrender their sovereignty to the United States even in the Constitution much less before there was a constitution.

[DiogenesLamp]

Doesn’t it follow then, that the actions of the South, succession, risk of war, were also about money?

Of course it was. It's always about money, but here is the difference.

Firstly, it was their money, and secondly, they had a right to be independent if they wanted independence.

What right did the North have to their money, and what right did the North have to stop them from being independent as the Declaration of Independence says they have the right to be?

The wealthy planter class wanted to hold on to their money making property, the slaves, and foresaw the eventual end of slavery if they stayed in the union.

As ugly as it was, this was their legal right at the time, and the people who coveted their money recognized that this was their legal right and even went so far as to offer further protection for that legal right by passing the Corwin Amendment through Congress.

And how would there be an "eventual end to slavery" with the Northern states passing the Corwin Amendment, which the evidence indicates would have happened if the seceded states had ratified it?

I have come to realize that making slavery the focus of the war is just propaganda and misdirection to take people's attention off of the money issues between the powerful Northern corporate titans, their pet representatives and senators in Congress, and their motivation in keeping that money stream from the South flowing into their pockets.

It's like saying we drove the Iraqi army out of Kuwait because they were tossing babies out of incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals. (Which was part of our propaganda justifying the war.) It is a argument meant to distract with an appeal to emotion.

Ignored is the serious economic reason why the war was prosecuted.

States had the right to leave the union as an implicit principal of the nation’s founding.

It was not treason to leave the union. It was treason, against the founding principals, to force states to remain against the wishes of their citizens.

It was also about morality. The implicit principals of the constitution gave the slaves the right to rise in rebellion, and arguably, the abolitionists the right to fight on behalf of the slaves.

John Brown tried to provoke a slave rebellion. Had he been successful, those same troops from Massachusetts that fought the confederates in the 1860s would have willingly marched down into the south to kill the rebellious slaves, and probably a lot of innocent ones too.

Something I learned which I did not know for most of my life is that the abolitionists were a tiny minority of people, and were considered "kooks" in that era. Most Northern people opposed slavery, but not for the moral reasons we are led to believe. Most of them opposed it because they saw slaves, as in people who would do work without pay, as a threat to their own economic well being. They had to trade their work for pay, and to them, slaves represented a threat to their income. Another reason why most people opposed slavery is because they hated blacks and didn't want them in their society. They wanted their society to have only white people and they saw slavery as a dangerous mixing of the races.

The only thing that could have morally justified the war was freeing the slaves.

Which is exactly how they presented it to the public. They killed 750,000 people to keep the wealthy and powerful robber barons and their pet congress in control of the economic output of the South, and they dared not let people focus on that.

Although Texas reserving the right to leave suggests that leaving the Union was not going to be easy for the other states, that many held it indissoluble without previous exemption.

But this is not an evidence based view, this is an emotionally based view. I have learned what I could of the arguments from both sides, and the people who argue for the right to independence have a lot more proof and better proof than those who argue that it is forbidden.

To my knowledge, the only supporting evidence from the founding era that the founders considered secession to be illegal are two statements by James Madison, and one of those is made 40 years after the fact.

All the other evidence argues the founders recognized the right of people to become independent of a central government they felt no longer represented their interests.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "the fact that the federal government got most of its money through tariffs which were paid overwhelmingly by the Southern states."

That is a flat-out lie, yes, believed and expressed by some Southerners before 1861, but it's laughably untrue.
In fact, Southerners paid virtually no tariffs.
Arguments which claim they did are convoluted and full of logical errors.

FLT-bird: "the scale of federal expenditures for corporate subsidies and infrastructure projects which were spent overwhelmingly in the Northern states."

Another flat-out lie, also often repeated by Southerners before 1861.
It is only remotely true if by "Northern states" you mean every state North of South Carolina.
In actual fact, Federal spending corresponded pretty well to populations and numbers of representatives from each region.

FLT-bird: "the longstanding and bitter complaints by Southerners about this exploitation at the hands of the federal government for the benefit of the Northern states"

Those are just more lies.
In fact, Southerners were never out of power before secession in 1861.
After the 1800 election, Southern Democratics controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency almost continuously until 1861.
Even in those brief periods when Whigs won control, it was still Southern Whigs who called the shots -- Whig Presidents Harrison, Tyler and Taylor were all slaveholders.
The most influential Whig in Congress, Henry Clay, was a Southern slaveholder.

Some Southerners did complain bitterly about the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations", but it only passed due to the strong support of other Southerners like Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay and even, originally, the Vice President, SC's John C. Calhoun.
Indeed, a majority of New Englanders also voted against the 1828 Tariff, meaning, it was not an issue of "North vs. South".

So, in reality, Southerners were never out of power in Washington before secession in 1861.
What Southerners didn't like, they could prevent.

FLT-bird: "the fact that the North was perfectly willing to protect slavery - effectively forever - by express constitutional amendment if only the original 7 seceding states would return....which they refused."

No Republican in 1860 was willing to increase the US Constitution's implied protections for slavery.
Most Republicans even opposed the mildest Corwin Amendment.
But, as Lincoln said, Corwin did not increase protections for slavery, it only expressed directly what he understood the Constitution to already mean.
Nor was Corwin intended to win back Confederate slave states, but only to reassure Union Border Slave States that Washington would not pass laws against their slavery.

FLT-bird: "that slavery was ended just about nowhere else in the Western world (ie Europe and all their colonial possessions around the world) via a big bloody war.
It was ended at about the same time, for the same reason (industrialization) and the usual method of ending slavery was via compensated emancipation."

Even though our pro-Confederates delight in minimizing slavery's moral issues, the fact remains that all of our Founding Fathers, even the Southerners, recognized slavery as a moral wrong which should be gradually abolished.

Indeed, Thomas Jefferson not only supported abolition in the Northwest Territories and in international imports of slaves, he also proposed nationally compensated emancipation.
That proposal went nowhere because it was opposed by Southerners.

FLT-bird: "The fact that I had gotten all the way through college as a history major and had never been taught this really opened my eyes to just how propagandized we are in America."

Since all of that is just pro-Confederate propaganda lies, it's not surprising you didn't learn it in school.

FLT-bird: "It was like watching the corporate media start attaching their tongues to Obama’s shorts in 2007 without even any pretense of balance, fairness, objectivity, etc and watching them just push the narrative of the day for the Democrat party on every single issue since then."

Southern Democrats lied just as much in, say, 1860 as Democrats do today.
Democrats have always been the party of lies and liars.

FLT-bird: "Does it really shock anybody to hear that the history faculty....ie part of Academia....is just as massively biased and just as prone to pushing narratives, outright lying, and hiding the truth as the corporate media?"

Because they are Democrats, and Democrats are all about trying to sell you their Big Lies.
That was just as true in 1860 as it is today.

FLT-bird: "Once you know you’re being lied to and start looking for the truth yourself, you start finding it. The key is waking up to the fact that you’re being lied to in the first place. Many still haven’t woken up to that."

Once you've been brainwashed (or brainwashed yourself) with Democrat lies, it can be nearly impossible to break their hold on your mind, as posters like FLT-bird and DiogenesLamp amply demonstrate.

[DiogenesLamp]

So if the civil war wasn’t about slavery, what was the Emancipation Proclamation about? If slavery was to last forever why did Lincoln free all the inventory?

Self interest. The war between the two forces had become so bitter, there was no hope that things would go back to the way they were before the war. The South was outraged at the bloodshed the North had perpetrated on them, and if the South's ability to control it's economic output was not destroyed, that force would be turned against the people who had hurt them. They would not trade with Northern industry, they would not use Northern shipping to ship their goods, they would use every economic tool at their disposal to get payback against the North who had killed so many of their people.

By destroying slavery, they took away the economic power the people of the South would have used to fight back against them economically. It impoverished the wealthy people and put them into circumstances where they had no choice but to continue trade with the North and the usage of it's goods and services, or they would simply become destitute.

And giving former slaves the right to vote, knowing full well and absolutely that every single one of those votes would support the Republican party, it gave them political power to further insure their continued control of the government and thereby access to the riches the government would provide from their manipulation of it.

[zeugma]

Pretty much all wars are economic. By the time of the civil war, slavery was being gradually made uneconomical due to advances in technology. The cotton gin was pretty much going to destroy the economics of it even further. Slavery was a factor, but northern business interests were also a factor. If you think so much blood and treasure was expended merely to free blacks from a condition that had existed for as long as civilization, you’re delusional. History is always more complex than a bumper sticker slogan.

[DiogenesLamp]

Quite true. The essential documents in the form of the Confederate Articles of Secession are now available on the internet,

Irrelevant. Focusing on their alleged reasons for wanting to leave is dismissing their right to leave. Their reasons for leaving may have been morally wrong or even stupid, but you cannot gainsay someone's right to do something because you don't like why they want to do it.

And that being said, Paul Craig Roberts argues their claims of wanting to leave over slavery were simply intended to be a clever legal strategy for getting out of the contract that was the US Constitution. By arguing that the Northern states had breached the contract first, it gives them the legal right to revoke the contract. In other words, all the statements claiming this was the reason were just a ploy.

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/11/13/a-civil-war-lesson-for-the-uneducated/

With the US Congress and the Northern states willing to vote to pass a slavery forever amendment, the fact that the Southern states didn't accept this deal implies that Paul Craig Roberts is correct. They weren't after protection for slavery, they were after the money and used "slavery" as an excuse to get out of the contract.

[Political Junkie Too]

Yes, I meant that they go back to being a State outside of the Constitution,but I think I meant to imply that if one state leaves the Union, that dissolves the Union for all. They all devolve into 50 independent states.

That's what Madison meant by the right to secede is also the right of the many to oust. One state leaving breaks the Union for all.

-PJ

[DiogenesLamp]

I was taught in a Chicago middle school that it was the war of “Northern Aggression”.

I have heard it called that, and after doing quite a lot of research regarding elements of how it came to happen, I now see that as a reasonable argument.

But that's not what I was taught. I was always taught that the war was to liberate the slaves and to punish the South for attacking fort Sumter.

Slavery only came into it late in the game.

I've never heard anything about the civil war that wasn't attributed to slavery, at least not for most of my life.

[Glad2bnuts]

A careful consideration of what you theorize, it seems that the South and the North were for slavery. By definition, that means there was a different reason for the War.

[DiogenesLamp]

Money, greed and evil was definitely the root of slavery in this country.

Yes it was, but people don't realize it was also at the roots of those who first tried to protect slavery, but later decided to destroy it, meaning the Northern states.

You don't see the greed factor attributed to them but when you look at the details, it becomes quite apparent that there was 750 million dollars per year at stake for the powerful Northern interests.

[heartwood]

In spite of the Corwin Amendment, the abolitionists would have kept pushing.

Think of the Indian treaties.

What is signed doesn’t always hold.

[heartwood]

The cotton gin promoted slavery, by making short staple cotton a viable an economically viable product. Short staple cotton grows where long staple won’t, opening more regions to cotton farming.

The cotton gin would never replace field hands.

[FLT-bird]

That is a flat-out lie, yes, believed and expressed by some Southerners before 1861, but it's laughably untrue. In fact, Southerners paid virtually no tariffs. Arguments which claim they did are convoluted and full of logical errors.

Nope! The denial of it is a flat out lie. Everybody including even the Northern newspapers at the time admitted it was true. The lying denial is just laughable in fact.

Another flat-out lie, also often repeated by Southerners before 1861. It is only remotely true if by "Northern states" you mean every state North of South Carolina. In actual fact, Federal spending corresponded pretty well to populations and numbers of representatives from each region.

Another case of a flat out lying denial of the obvious truth. It was absolutely true that Northern States got the lion's share of federal expenditures despite paying only a tiny fraction of the taxes.

Those are just more lies. In fact, Southerners were never out of power before secession in 1861. After the 1800 election, Southern Democratics controlled both houses of Congress and the Presidency almost continuously until 1861. Even in those brief periods when Whigs won control, it was still Southern Whigs who called the shots -- Whig Presidents Harrison, Tyler and Taylor were all slaveholders. The most influential Whig in Congress, Henry Clay, was a Southern slaveholder.

Nope! The denial of it is yet more lies. Southerners were a minority in Congress for years and years prior to Secession and the last few presidents - Buchanan and Lincoln - were Northerners.

Henry Clay was a Kentuckian who was a nationalist and who championed the "American plan" of high protective tariffs and lots of corporate welfare. This is what Lincoln believed in as well.

Some Southerners did complain bitterly about the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations", but it only passed due to the strong support of other Southerners like Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay and even, originally, the Vice President, SC's John C. Calhoun. Indeed, a majority of New Englanders also voted against the 1828 Tariff, meaning, it was not an issue of "North vs. South".

It wasn't a strictly North-South fight getting the Tariff of Abominations passed but once Southerners saw how damaging it was to their economy, they became staunchly opposed to the point that South Carolina nullified it touching off a national crisis.

So, in reality, Southerners were never out of power in Washington before secession in 1861. What Southerners didn't like, they could prevent.

in reality, Southerners became more and more of a minority in Washington DC and by 1860 it was clear to everybody that they no longer had the strength to prevent passage of the Morrill Tariff which eventually TRIPLED tariff rates. Southerners knew exactly how harmful this would be to them - and their response was secession.

No Republican in 1860 was willing to increase the US Constitution's implied protections for slavery. Most Republicans even opposed the mildest Corwin Amendment. But, as Lincoln said, Corwin did not increase protections for slavery, it only expressed directly what he understood the Constitution to already mean.

The Corwin Amendment would have expressly protected slavery effectively forever in the US Constitution. Lincoln and the Northern dominated Congress also offered strengthened fugitive slave laws.

Nor was Corwin intended to win back Confederate slave states, but only to reassure Union Border Slave States that Washington would not pass laws against their slavery.

That is false. It was definitely intended to persuade the original 7 seceding states to re-enter the union. Anybody who reads Lincoln's first Inaugural Address will see it right away.

Even though our pro-Confederates delight in minimizing slavery's moral issues, the fact remains that all of our Founding Fathers, even the Southerners, recognized slavery as a moral wrong which should be gradually abolished. Indeed, Thomas Jefferson not only supported abolition in the Northwest Territories and in international imports of slaves, he also proposed nationally compensated emancipation. That proposal went nowhere because it was opposed by Southerners.

Lots of people saw slavery and its effects as pernicious. Pretty much nobody was willing to shed their blood for its abolition. Nor were the 94.33% of Southerners who did not own so much as a single slave willing to shed their blood for its preservation. Slavey is not what people on each side were fighting over.

Since all of that is just pro-Confederate propaganda lies, it's not surprising you didn't learn it in school.

Since the denial of it is the standard pro federal government propaganda and lies, it shows just how deep the propaganda goes that I was not exposed to the truth even all the way through college.

Southern Democrats lied just as much in, say, 1860 as Democrats do today. Democrats have always been the party of lies and liars.

Republicans lied every bit as much back then as Establishment Republicans aka RINOs lie today. They are after all, part of the Establishment. As we've all seen on issue after issue, there is simply no lie they will not stoop to in order to keep themselves in power and to keep the cash flowing into their pockets.

Because they are Democrats, and Democrats are all about trying to sell you their Big Lies. That was just as true in 1860 as it is today.

They are the Establishment and the Establishment has always been all about trying to sell you on their Big Lies. Its not limited to just one party. RINOs are part of the Establishment and are fully in on it - just like they were part of the steal last time around.

Once you've been brainwashed (or brainwashed yourself) with Democrat lies, it can be nearly impossible to break their hold on your mind, as posters like FLT-bird and DiogenesLamp amply demonstrate.

Once you swallow the Establishment's likes like BroJoeK, it is nearly impossible to get through to you just as it is with him.

[heartwood]

The cotton gin removes seeds and straightens fibers. It does not plant, weed, or harvest.

[FLT-bird]

Yes, I meant that they go back to being a State outside of the Constitution,but I think I meant to imply that if one state leaves the Union, that dissolves the Union for all. They all devolve into 50 independent states. That's what Madison meant by the right to secede is also the right of the many to oust. One state leaving breaks the Union for all.

Why would one state leaving dissolve the union for all? When the Southern states left the union, they never even suggested that Wisconsin could not maintain whatever kind of relationship it wished with Rhode Island. That was entirely their business.