Posted on 04/05/2024 4:36:06 AM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
The importation of slaves was banned in 1808. The owners needed to take care of their slaves as they were only getting new ones in the children the slaves bore.
Meanwhile, in the Caribbean Islands, the slaves died by the millions, lasting maybe a year before they were literally worked to death. Shiploads of fresh slaves to replace them were still coming.
The country went through all the trouble of making a foundational document that said all men are created equal, and then said “except in some states, where you can be property”.
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Just yesterday I was telling my daughter about this - that many of the states wanted to get rid of slavery from the very beginning. But then the southern states wouldn’t have joined the nation. So they made compromises.
I know a lawyer that was involved in a huge corporate lawsuit. When he got home after the months-long meetings in D.C. and a solution had been worked out he said “Oh, it was okay I guess. We both agreed on the compromise that was arrived at. But, I don’t know, it seems like such a ....
compromise.”
Some compromises are necessary, certainly in corporate law. Whether or not people can be property... that’s not really a good thing to compromise on. Because really that wasn’t a compromise. That was just flat out discarding an ideal. I don’t really expect corporations to have ideals. People, societies, countries, those are different. And our founders stated one, then chickened out.
Haven’t read the whole thread, and someone else may have posted this info; but the first legal slaveholder in the United States was a black man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Johnson_(colonist)
“That is incorrect. I saw this topic discussed a month or so ago, and it turns out there were quite a lot of Republicans who owned slaves.”
What percent is “quite a lot”? Just because Politifact can name a few Republicans that owned slaves doesn’t mean it was common. I don’t think anyone believes the number of Republican slave owners was over a couple of percent.
Thanks for setting me straight.
My bad, thanks for the info.
Yup. Cotton made up most of it, (over 50%) but with tobacco, hemp, indigo, sugar and so forth made up 72% of all us trade with Europe.
The federal government was very small at the time, a tiny percent of the gross national product.
GDP was around 4 billion. Federal revenue from the Southern states was 65 million.
That 4 billion included gold from California and Silver from Nevada.
You left out the sarcasm tag.
All my life I thought it was, and then about three years ago I got into one of these discussions and after doing research, I learned a lot of what we had been led to believe wasn't actually true.
https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/why-the-war-was-not-about-slavery/
A bit wordy, but there were things in there that I hadn't seen before. The part about the national bank was quite interesting.
"What about this bill? Don’t be deceived by the terminology. So-called National Banks were to be the property of favoured groups of private capitalists. They were to have as capital interest-bearing government bonds at a 50% discount. The bank notes that they were to issue were to be the national currency. The banks, not the government, had control of this currency. That is, these favoured capitalists had the immense power and profit of controlling the money and credit of the country. Crony capitalism that has been the main feature of the American regime up to this very moment."
This dovetails with other aspects I have learned from other sources. It fits quite well with my existing mental model of our current governing class.
Corporations having powerful influence on the government and using it to further their own interests at the expense of the citizens is the exact problem we are suffering right now.
The media-liars serve corporate interests and they help to elect liberals because liberals controlling government allows the trillions in government spending to work its way through all the right "connected" pockets.
The liberal party is a parasite of the government and the people and derives much of it's revenue from it's control of the government. Joe Biden is a prime example of someone using government power to enrich himself and his family. He takes bribes and obviously so.
He got a prosecutor who was investigating his son in Ukraine fired by threatening to with hold Federal money to be sent to Ukraine.
Our government is corrupt, and that corruption traces all the way back to the early part of the 19th century.
Interesting link, but there is more out there still. There are a lot more quotes from Northern newspapers showing that the primary concern of the North was the continuation of the collection of money and revenue from the South.
And for what it's worth, I'm not from the South and neither is my family. My Grandfather arrived her in the early 1900s and he did not settle in any of the Southern states. My family had nothing to do with the Civil war.
The primary idea, the essential essence which was declared, was that people had a right to separate from an existing government and to form one that suited their interests.
It is called the "Declaration of *INDEPENDENCE*", not the Declaration of Equality among men."
"All men are created equal" was just a flowery line that Jefferson inserted into the text, and the people of the colonies saw it as only applying to themselves, and it was only later that they began to think it should be applied to the slaves.
July 4, of 1776, the only thing the Declaration of Independence meant was the States had a right to secede from the Union. (United Kingdom.)
You do realize that on July 4, 1776, every signer of the Declaration of Independence was a representative of a slave state?
There were no "free" states in 1776. None.
So who would they "compromise" with?
It wasn't until the 1780s that any "free" states emerged, and most not until after the 1790s. At the time of the constitutional convention, 1787, the vast majority of the states were still slave states. Again, the only people who needed to "compromise" were the very small number of "free" states. They were a tiny minority of the total.
Had the "free" states rejected slavery, there never would have been a "Union" at all. At least not with any free states in it.
From the 0% you mentioned, one is an infinity more than zero.
I've given you two.
Yes, in larger terms, Republican slave owners were few, but not zero.
I don’t think anyone believes the number of Republican slave owners was over a couple of percent.
The numbers of Republican slave owners was likely very small. I think most were members of the Whig party that moved to the Republican party. The "Republican" party was after all founded to oppose slavery, so a "Republican" slave owner is a bit of a contradiction, isn't it? :)
You are a gracious opponent and I salute you.
You've set me straight more often than I, you.
General Grant also owned slaves. (Through his wife.)
Not the case. Dent, Julias father, gave Grant a slave. Grant kept the young man for about a year than gave him his freedom.
Julia, on the other hand, never owned slaves. The four female slaves that attended Julia, the household and children were the property of her father. She never had legal title to them. Dent would never allow the four female slaves to accompany Julia when she left the State of Missouri.
Wrong.
Workers were paid a small pittance for each item they produced. No Mississippi cotton plantation slave was paid a cent for the cotton he produced. In addition, the textile worker had the option of quitting and moving on. Something a Mississippi field slave could only dream of.
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“Yes, in larger terms, Republican slave owners were few, but not zero.”
I never said the number of Repub slave owners was zero. I said “nearly all” were DemocRATS. 98-99% is close enough to nearly all unless you are trying to nitpick. Perhaps you would prefer “vast majority”. In either case you seem determined to defend the Party of slavery and the KKK.
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