Ohioans: ** “You focus on the motives of the South haters; but I have a hard time getting past their abysmal demonstration of a total lack of any rational perspective. “ **
Just so we’re clear on this: nobody but nobody posting on Free Republic hates “the South”.
Most of us have family & friends there, have lived there ourselves and often travel in the South.
Even in the North here you see Confederate flags on homes & pickups, we love our rebels.
Further, the “lack of rational perspective” we see comes 100% from our Lost Cause mythologizers.
In thread after thread over many years Lost Causers post their myths & venom against “Northerners” who you then equate to anybody that responds to defend simple facts & reason.
Ohioan: ** “1. In all the places in the world, where people were being held in involuntary servitude in 1860... —can anyone name any place where the “bondage” was more humanely administered than in much of the Old South? “ **
No, but neither can anyone name another country where slaveholders fought so fiercely to protect their “property rights”.
Ohioan: ** “How about in non-bondage States, here or in Europe, were there many low paying, industrial jobs, where the laboring men & women were as humanely treated by their employers, as the bonds men & women in the Old South? “ **
One reason Southern slaves were often treated like family is because many literally were family — half brothers & sisters, cousins, nephews & nieces, etc.
Especially those in Marse’s Big House were well treated, fed & dressed.
Some were even taught to read, the Bible especially.
That did not however prevent them from being “sold down the river” when necessity or opportunity dictated, breaking up families regardless of how close they may have felt.
Field hands on big plantations were generally not treated so well.
They were worked harder and given fewer privileges than house servants.
Often they were not even allowed to grow their own food.
And so we’re clear on this, by standards of their own times US factory workers were well paid and housed.
That’s precisely why so many were willing to leave their farms & villages for a big city factory.
Yes, today we see their plight as miserable, especially during economic slumps.
Then they had very few outside of family & church willing or able to help them.
But at least they were never arbitrary “sold down the river” breaking up families which didn’t want to be broken.
Ohioan: ** “2. Why do not those who feign inveterate horror at the idea of anyone held in bondage ever consider how much of any worker’s time, in an alternative “free” system, is really his or her own; and how much absolutely dictated by the complex context of circumstances linked to the needs of survival, in any system?
And how much actual free time was allowed to the “slaves” of compassionate Southern Christian Plantation owners? “ **
First, let’s be clear, African slaves were never “slaves”, such quotation marks are absurd.
What is certainly appropriate is to put the word slave “owner” in quotes, since by our definition nobody ever “owns” another person.
Second, every Northern factory worker, regardless of how poorly paid or badly treated possessed the one essential freedom no African slave ever had: the freedom to pick up, leave and find a better life elsewhere.
And, indeed, most in America did exactly that, until they found just the circumstances that best suited them, whether their own farm out west, or as a skilled tradesman in town.
Ohioan: ** “ Just why were ex-slaves behaving in the manner Booker T. Washington describes, if their lives had been the hellish experience that the rabid Abolitionists claimed? (Booker T. Washington Address) “ **
No freed African slave, to my knowledge, ever voluntarily returned to slavery.
Ohioan: ** “3. ...Who, in Biblical times, or in Medieval times, with kindly intent, ever felt the need to go into an endless hissing fit over the fact that some people were for a time in a position to direct the lives of other people, unless there were other factors involved. “ **
Ah, but the key fact slavery apologists have to ignore is that throughout history there have been various categories & classes of slaves, each treated differently.
For example, most early immigrants to America arrived as young indentured servants, a category of slave, except that, first & foremost they had volunteered and second, the time was limited (i.e., seven years) after which they were free to do as they pleased.
Basically they were enslaved to pay off debts.
By stark contrast, African slaves were enslaved for life, and the lives of their descendants just as with livestock, not for debts, but because of their race.
Indeed some Southern states passed laws re-enslaving freed blacks, for no reason except their race.
So that was a far more unjust form of slavery than any recognized or “tolerated” in the Bible.
Ohioan: ** “4. A great many Southerners wanted to see the slaves emancipated—Jefferson for one.
But they recognized that there had to be careful preparation for the change in status.
The fact is that that preparation was never made... “ **
And therein lie the real facts of this matter.
Jefferson’s proposal for the Federal government to purchase freedom and return ex-slaves to Africa or elsewhere, those ideas and all similar ones went nowhere because slaveholders would have none of it.
Even in 1776, when many Southerners recognized slavery as wicked, others more strongly believed slavery was not only necessary, it was also in their minds moral.
That’s why such Jeffersonian abolition ideas went nowhere.
But another point needs to be added here: regarding “preparation for freedom” slaveholders had a big problem.
Since the Bible forbids enslaving God’s people, once slaves had learned to read and accept Christianity, they could no longer be kept as permanent slaves.
The Bible says they must be freed, and slaveholders knew it, which is why they wanted their slaves kept as ignorant as possible.
Ohioan: ** “...South haters in the 1865 era, promised the new freemen what they could not deliver; and should never have promised.
But those promises ushered in an age of dependency, since refurbished by new generations of demagogues, intent on preserving that dependency. “ **
Actually, **Republicans** after 1865 did deliver what they promised: freedom for all slaves, enfranchisement and justice.
And for years afterwards Southern Republicans elected blacks to political offices and other civic responsibilities.
But it didn’t last because in time **Democrats** were again allowed to vote in the South and THEY created all the conditions you Ohioan here decry.
Ohioan: ** “I would suggest that instead of treating the Confederate leaders as somehow abhorrent, we look at the skills developed on those great plantations, under the tutelage of Christian employers, and study how contemporary schools can achieve a similar result, before another generation of Black youth are misled to their own destruction by the Pied Pipers of the Left. “ **
Ohioan, you began by making a legitimate contrast between the treatment of Southern US slaves versus those in other countries, fine.
But now you suggest that treatment was in any way admirable by TODAY’S standards, and that is simply absurd.
By our standards most slaves were treated horribly, very few taught to read & write, or learn Christianity and for good reason from slaveholders’ perspectives.
Final words: I do no remember seeing a full throated defense of Southern slavery posted on FR before, and was a bit taken aback by it.
But if anyone seriously wishes, we can certainly discuss it at more length.
Slavery would have gone out on its own for economic and cultural reasons, but the radical abolitionist wing of the Republican Party had to have its way and turn the civil war into a war "about" ending slavery rather than preserving the union. This created resentment.
Once the slaves were free, Reconstruction sowed the seeds that created (understandable) resentments among white southerners and a sense of entitlement and revenge among blacks. This was exacerbated still further by forced integration in the 1960's.
Just as slavery would have faded on its own, blacks and whites would have learned to peacefully coexist in the South - in separate communities, but with normal business and interpersonal relationships. Instead, forcing them to coexist was a form of shock therapy that just created hostilities on both sides.
That said, we are missing some of each other's points, because of very diverse priorities.
For example, you maintain that no one posting on Free Republic "hates 'the South.'" While perhaps your protest is genuine from your prospective, it certainly ignores posters on various of the historic debate threads who have viciously denounced Robert E. Lee and other Confederate heroes. Of course some of those denounced were heroes to all traditional Americans. Lee certainly was. Growing up in the Ohio County next to that of General Grant, in the World War II era (long before I became a Conservative in High School), I knew how revered Lee was both by Grant and virtually all students of history, of all generations, and of all shades of opinion on current 1940s issues.
It is not a feigned reaction, in any sense. I was really startled, the first time I encountered a verbal assault on Robert E. Lee on Free Republic. Having gone to Oberlin to study the far Left in its own lair, I was certainly acquainted with Abolitionist venom--just not used to seeing it in Conservative circles.
Then there is your criticism of my putting "slaves" with reference to American slavery in quotations. As much of my commentary goes to the many manifestations of forced or involuntary labor systems in human history, the quotation marks were in recognition of the fact that American slavery did not involve Slavic people; and, as such might have been as well or better referenced by different terms for bondage.
Another example of our misconnection was in your comment suggesting that the Booker T. Washington address was about freed slaves voluntarily returning to slavery. The linked address--that at the Atlanta Exposition in 1895--cited those freed slaves going to the cemeteries, to mourn the passing of their former masters & mistresses, and citing their loyalty as a reason to hire them rather than the new immigrants pouring into the States.
You also miss the real point on education & preparation for freedom. Granting ex-slaves the suffrage, letting them be exploited as voters by those preaching a form of dependence on big government, was hardly a useful education, for those not seeking political office. The point of the skills learned on the plantation, is that they were with in the competence of those who were taught those skills. The present disaster in inner city high school education is too obvious for anyone to try to defend.
Everyone has a different complex of aptitudes, weaknesses, motivations, inhibitions, and a considerable array of personality traits. Many of those inner city youth have developable skills, which were better served on the great plantations, than they are today by the NEA affiliates, working in public education.
And no; of course, I am not suggesting replacing the schools with a return to Plantation life. The best remedy is to get the Federal bureaucrats, trying to prove a point, out of a position to stifle creative methodology in the schools.