A secular Jew makes a surprising discovery about Christians and American slavery

Acton Institute ^ | Apr 2019 | John B. Carpenter

[CondoleezzaProtege]

"Christians ended slavery." Do you think that’s a conservative simpleton’s mock-worthy bombast, embarrassing the rest of us with his black-and-white, unapologetic caricature of American history? No. It is the considered conclusion of a Nobel laureate, a former communist, a secular Jew, and arguably the foremost scholar on American slavery.

Robert Fogel (1922-2013), the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, was president of Cornell University’s American Youth for Democracy, investing eight years promoting communism. Meanwhile, he married Enid Morgan, an African-American woman, consequently suffering the ugliness of American racism personally. Eventually, he rejected communism. Apparently, the data didn’t support it.

Fogel was driven by data, perhaps the purest pursuer of empirical truth I’ve ever met in academia...

Fogel’s bean-counting approach led to his discovery that plantations, organized in a business-like fashion with their “gang system,” had an assembly line-like efficiency. Hence Southern slavery was fantastically profitable.

He concluded that if the Civil War had not been sparked when it was, the South would have continued to outpace the North, adapt slavery to industrialization, been unconquerable if a later Civil War had broken out, and likely would have spread slavery indefinitely. Slavery was on the ascendancy at the outbreak of the Civil War.

Furthermore – and here it sounds scandalous – most Southern slaves were treated materially well by their “owners.” The average slave consumed more calories and lived longer than the average, white, Northern city-dweller.

The moral question: If Southern slavery was profitable, even providing for the slaves a relatively decent material life, then why is it evil? If slavery is wrong, then, we have to look beyond the beans that can be counted, the dollars that can be earned, the efficiency that can be charted. The answer is found in a system of morality that comes from beyond mere materialism...

[CondoleezzaProtege]

- Excerpt from a good article. Yes, Christians owned slaves and plenty defended the institution, with some half-defending it. And still others who came to regret their views later, even freeing their slaves to reflect this.

Regardless, the ideological and theological origins of the abolition movement (both in USA and UK) are not discussed enough in historical discourse.

The debate about slavery far preceded the 19th Century as is noted by the 3/5ths clause in the Constitution and such -- but the seeds of abolition were very much present even before the USA's official founding. And it's because these seeds were rooted in the highly religious soil of the 13 colonies.

[Fai Mao]

The Christian Byzantine Empire was the first nation to abolish slavery

[Telepathic Intruder]

And then wiped out by the Muslims, who are the world’s chief ringleaders of slavery.

[Nifster]

A very good read

[fso301]

plantations, organized in a business-like fashion with their “gang system,” had an assembly line-like efficiency. Hence Southern slavery was fantastically profitable.

Which meant in agriculture, you were either a slave owner, or a poor subsistence farmer unable to do much more than feed the family. This fundamental inequality IMO had much to do with the deterioration in race relations over the ~200 years that slavery had been legal.

The devastation throughout the South the carnage of the Civil War caused many of the same whites to mistakenly regard blacks as the cause of their suffering rather than the immorality of the antebellum system.

[SkyPilot]

Throughout human history, there have been very, very few "social safety nets", and even those were no where near the scale of freebies that people in the US and Europe can receive today. If the freebies we dole out in America were to dry up overnight, just imagine what people would do?

The Romans provided free bread for Roman citizens and also for part of the slave population, depending on the reliability of grain shipments from Egypt and elsewhere.

There are other examples. There were charity houses in Colonial America and in Europe, but the "poor houses" barely gave people anything. The common theme throughout human was that you either worked or were supported by their family. Otherwise, you starved to death.

The slavery system was evil in a myriad of ways (separating family members, denying human dignity, cruel treatment at the hands of some owners, etc.) However, it also provided food, clothing, housing, medical care, etc. to slaves because slaves were valuable, and the owners were financially (and also socially) motivated to take care of them. I know that sounds controversial today, but it is mostly true.

Moreover, American slavery gets all the press, from both the left and the globalists. The truth is that American slaveholders were among the most congenial and caring of the bunch compared to the Muslim slavers, whose cruelty and genocidal tendencies were legendary.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Robert Fogel (1922-2013), the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, was president of Cornell University’s American Youth for Democracy, investing eight years promoting communism. Meanwhile, he married Enid Morgan, an African-American woman, consequently suffering the ugliness of American racism personally. Eventually, he rejected communism. Apparently, the data didn’t support it.

---

Data apparently, did not support communism? Body count too high (millions), with respect to the good achieved (nil)?

People who lose their religious faith often transfer that faith to a secular cause, with the same religious fervor (communism, environmentalism, anti-Trumpism, etc.). They are just not rational, and it is harmful to bring toward a secular goal.

[BroJoeK]

from the article: " 'Christians ended slavery.'
Do you think that’s a conservative simpleton’s mock-worthy bombast, embarrassing the rest of us with his black-and-white, unapologetic caricature of American history?
No."

ping

[BroJoeK]

from the article: "During one after-class chat, he told me that he was astounded to discover that Christians ended slavery.
He said something like, 'Here I was, a professor in some of America’s leading universities and I had no idea that Christians had done that.'
Fogel concluded that it was not economic forces that brought about the end of slavery but a moral revolution rooted in Puritanism. Christians, mainly from Puritan New England and Quaker Pennsylvania, turned the tide of popular opinion in the North against slavery.
Remember, originally every state was a slave-state.
Slavery was normalcy for America too at its founding.
That changed because Christians increasingly agreed that slavery was evil, transforming what had been a slave-holding country into a house divided."

[2nd amendment mama]

placemarker

[Carriage Hill]

Very good article.

[Flag_This]

“the South would have continued to outpace the North, adapt slavery to industrialization, been unconquerable if a later Civil War had broken out”

Sure.

During the war, what was the South’s second largest city?

Any place the Army of the Potomac happened to be on any given day.

[EasySt]

Thanks for posting this!

[sphinx]

Furthermore – and here it sounds scandalous – most Southern slaves were treated materially well by their “owners.” The average slave consumed more calories and lived longer than the average, white, Northern city-dweller.

This is the argument that Democrats make for socialism today: "you are better off surrendering your freedom and being a ward of the state …." And a lot of people buy it.

[RoosterRedux]

Good article. I am going to send this to friends.

[Pikachu_Dad]

sorry, stopped reading after the second insulting sentence!

“conservative simpleton’s mock-worthy bombast, embarrassing the rest of us”

really?!?

really?!?

really ?!?

[Robert A Cook PE]

Yes, I strongly disagree with that idea that slavery was going to continue to expand, or even be profitable . Machines (coal, steam, then diesel and gss) had it beat everywhere . And it was never profitable outside of large, single crop plantation s.

[Fai Mao]

It took the Muslims 800 years to conquer Byzantium and the had help from the Roman Catholics in the 3rd Crusade.

[miss marmelstein]

I think the author was being ironic not critical.

[a fool in paradise]

Quite a few minority musicians in the 20th century were slave owners, known as pimps, before they became famous.

They collected the money and took care of their stock. paid rents, bailed them out, dressed them, kicked them out of the shop if they didn’t earn their keep.

And the record labels like Atlantic did it to their stable too.