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...

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "It is no coincidence that the modern Organized Labor movements are mostly concentrated in what were the Northern States of the Civil War."

Maybe, but there was no unionization to speak of in the 1850s or 1860 -- it didn't yet exist and by 1860 still over 40% of Northerners were farmers.
Indeed, in 1860 just as in 2016, it was generally rural farming counties which voted Republican, industrialized cities voted Democrat.
And, dare I say it? -- farmers are by nature more religious than many others:

DiogenesLamp: "So you tell me.
Are/were not the Northern states preoccupied with labor/wage issues?"

Certainly not in 1860 and certainly not among rural Republican voters.

DiogenesLamp: "Economic data tells the truth.
People lie about their motives and always prefer to color themselves in the best possible light."

The data tells us most 1860 Republicans were rural farmers who likely never met a slave or worried about economic competition.
And thanks to the Second Great Awakening, they were quite aware of the Bible's opposition to slavery.

DiogenesLamp: "You can't have an explosion without a fuse being lit.
Christianity is what lit the fuse.
Concern over the well being of slaves was not the powder, but who cares from what the powder was made so long as the explosion happened, right? "

Sorry, but the truth is the opposite of what you claim -- Christianity did not just "light the fuse", it provided the moral perspective, determination and "ammunition" to oppose slavery amongst people (Republicans!) who would otherwise have no serious concerns for it.

DiogenesLamp: "The vast bulk of manpower fighting the civil war did not care about slaves.
Only the tiny few abolitionists cared about this, but without their constant efforts to push this agenda, it never would have gone anywhere."

Well... first of all, there were 100 times more Northerners who cared about slavery than Confederates who cared about "money flows from Europe" or "Northeastern power brokers".

Second, slavery became a growing concern the longer Civil War lasted, to the point where CSA General Morgan published:

"...any man who pretends to believe that this is not a war for the emancipation of the blacks, and that the whole course of the Yankee government has not only been directed to the abolition of slavery, but even to a stirring up of servile insurrections, is either a fool or a liar."
The Vidette, November 1862

DiogenesLamp: "It just so happens that the interests of the power blocks and the interests of the abolitionists aligned around 1863.
The power blocks wanted the South economically broken for daring to challenge them, and they also wanted all those votes they planned to newly create."

When Confederates provoked, started, declared & waged war against the United States, in Union states, it did p*ss off a lot of people.
Then Confederates refused any peace terms better than Unconditional Surrender, so they got what they wanted.

And your problem with this is what, exactly?

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem quoting the article: "and slave-owners rarely used their slaves for sexual indulgence, with only about 2% of slave births being by white fathers."

Bubba Ho-Tep: "Yeah, slavery was awesome!
That's why no slaves wanted to be free, runaways were unheard of, and there was no need for laws about sending back escapees." </sarc>

jeffersondem: "I was afraid the findings of Nobel laureate Fogel was going to rub some fur the wrong way.
I even said so earlier."

So I'm no DNA expert, but perhaps you can explain how, if only 2% of slaves had white fathers, today's African Americans average from 20% to 30% European ancestry, depending on the study?

Really, doesn't it make us suspect there were more crackers in the woodshed than most want to admit?

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Noting that some states hold slaves is not the same thing as proving that slavery was the reason they were leaving."

So, confess it, you've never actually read those "Reasons for Secession" documents, have you?
Not even once, right?
That's how you can continue to claim, in the face of evidence to the contrary, that they are not "all about slavery", isn't it?

Once again, this link lists all seven of the pre-Sumter "Reasons for Secession" documents, showing that all seven focus on slavery as a major reason and for some the only reason given, for secession.

These reduce you fanciful claims about "money flows from Europe" and "Northeastern power brokers" to mere speculations about alleged "real reasons" behind the publicly stated reason produced by Confederates themselves.
But the real problem behind your alleged "real reasons" is that, obviously, they were not given publicly because they would persuade nobody of a genuine need to secede.
But Lincoln's Black Republican threats to slavery could and did, which makes slavery the "real reason", regardless of "Northeastern power brokers."

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "What generated the bulk of the money for New York and Washington?"

The data shows that cotton was 50% of US exports in, say, 1860 and about 80% of cotton shipped directly to European customers from ports other than New York (#1 was New Orleans).
The data also shows that for every dollar of cotton exported, Southerners "imported" a dollar's worth of manufactured goods from the North..
That's why, when European imports arrived in New York harbor, they didn't re-ship to the South, but rather to buyers all over the country.

That's how New York made its money.

Now DiogenesLamp claims endlessly this was the real "root cause" for secession, but his problem is that nobody at the time said it.
What they said instead was: slavery.

DiogenesLamp: "Perversely, New York and Washington DC were making more money off of slavery than were the actual slave holders.
Isn't that amusing? "

If that were true, then wouldn't you expect average New Yorkers to be wealthier in 1860 than average Deep South whites?
But they weren't.
In fact, by 1860 Deep South whites were, on average, the wealthiest group of people on Earth, let alone in the USA.

This should tell us that whatever products & services Southerners hired from the North, they kept plenty of money for themselves and their "way of life".

DiogenesLamp: "The South was getting what was left over after New York and Washington DC took the lion's share of the production. "

That's pure fantasy unsupported by any data except DiogenesLamp's own blind hatred of America and Americans.
How else to explain it?

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "One of the things I learned when I became an activist..."

I trust that DiogenesLamp's "activism" consists entirely of misinforming Free Republic readers about the nature & reasons for the US Civil War.
I'd hate to think DiogenesLamp is out spreading his anti-American nonsense to other less informed groups.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "*THAT* is in the eye of the beholder. Sort of like "at pleasure" rather than "necessity." People have differing opinions about what constitutes "pleasure" and what constitutes "necessity." "

Nonsense.
If Chiniquy's alleged quote of Lincoln were factual, then you'd find other similar remarks from Lincoln of undoubted provenance.
But you just don't.
What we do have are quotes from Lincoln of a very different nature, for examples, here and here.

DiogenesLamp: "Find me some examples of prominent academics criticizing Obama.
Or are we to conclude that Obama never did anything wrong because academics never mention it? "

The question here is, did Lincoln ever say what Chiniquy claimed he said?
The answer is, there's no evidence to support the claim and plenty to contradict it.
There has also been a vast industry producing fake quotes from many people, Lincoln in particular, and Chiniquy's an obvious example.

So, if DiogenesLamp choses to believe Chiniquy, the only explanation can be your own unbridled hatred for Lincoln and Americans generally overcomes any scruples you might have regarding historical facts.

As for Obama, the birther controversy was lead by our current President who seemingly threw in the towel after some kind of document was "found" in Hawaii.
I don't know the real truth of that matter, but it matters that those who've had the resources to study it most seem most devoted to accepting Hawaii as his birthplace, or at least to accept "natural" citizenship from his American mother, regardless.

But Chiniquy's claims about Lincoln have no such support, certainly not from any American who loves their country.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp speaking of Jefferson Davis: "A drowning man will grasp at anything he thinks might save him.
If people approached him and claimed they could get him money, arms and men, I think he would have listened."

But we're not talking about Davis "drowning", this is still March & April 1861, when Davis had every option in the world available to him, he could have decided on anything and yet Chiniquy claims Davis was taking advice from Jesuits to start war against the United States!

It makes no sense.

DiogenesLamp "Lincoln was reacting viciously towards anyone he saw as potentially causing him trouble over the war.
He had that congressman Clement Vallandigham sent to the Confederates.
He had newspaper editors arrested and locked up.
You may not see him as a bit out of control during this period, but by today's standards his behavior would have been seen as quite tyrannical. "

The same might be said of Jefferson Davis and yet, when has DiogenesLamp ever felt the same vicious hatred of Davis as Lincoln?

DiogenesLamp "Would he have reacted viciously towards someone telling him the Pope was backing the Confederacy?
If he didn't like religion or Christianity anyways, why wouldn't he see the Pope as his enemy? "

And yet there's no evidence, even today, the Pope ever lifted even a finger to "back the Confederacy", so why would anybody claim he had, or why would Lincoln believe it?
So it makes no sense and a rational person would give it no credence, so why does DiogenesLamp?

DiogenesLamp "You see it as out of character, and I'm not sure if it is or if it isn't.
I've seen enough of the dark side of his character to be uncertain about this."

But you seen nothing -- zero, zip, nada seen -- except your own blind hatred of Lincoln projected into fantasy-history beyond the realm or rational thought.
And there's no good reason for it, it's just pure hatred, equivalent to Chiniquy's, FRiend.

I think you need help for it.

DiogenesLamp "I'm still trying to make up my mind as to whether or not he was a tyrant or a saint, and I see evidence for both interpretations."

Tyrant or saint??
Both terms are equally... ahem... inappropriate.
A good man in a very difficult situation, with similarities to Jefferson Davis except Lincoln was less well prepared for, but in the end better able to cope with, circumstances he was given.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Beyond that, what business is it of the United States government if foreign countries wanted to employ the same sort of slave labor that was legal in the United States?"

Now you're just changing the subject.
The original question is expansion of slavery into other US states, territories or, indeed, to other countries.
You repeatedly claim it wasn't going to happen because large cotton plantations could only be found in the Deep South.
And restricting slavery meant it must in time die out.

But in fact, during the 1850s slavery was expanding in every way possible, including:

1. In western states like Arkansas & Texas slave populations more than doubled from 1850 to 1860.
2. In western territories like "bleeding" Kansas and New Mexico slavery competed with "free labor".
3. In Southern factories and railroads slaves were employed by the thousands.
4. Via the SCOTUS Dred Scott decision, slaves could seemingly be transported anywhere for however long wanted.
5. As Lincoln famously said:
   "We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State."

6. And via what was called "filibusters" slavery could expand internationally:
   "I want Cuba . . . I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason -- for the planting and spreading of slavery."
   Albert Gallatin Brown, U.S. Senator from Mississippi, speaking with regard to the several filibuster expeditions to Central America [Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 106.] "

So your claim that expanding slavery was, in effect, a "manufactured crisis" in 1860, is no more valid than similar claims by Democrats today regarding increased illegal immigration.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp on Charles Dickens being cheated: "Really? How so?
What, did they stiff him for a hotel room or something? "

No, the US in those days was not big on enforcing copyright laws, sort of like China today, and so many Americans read Dickens' works who never paid him royalties for it.
Dickens hated being cheated and so thought us a bunch of crass money-grubbers -- and that was many years before 1860.

IIRC, Dickens had nothing good to say about us until after the war, his final tour of the United States, he finally saw a different side of Americans and said so.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I believe this map shows where cotton (and therefore slavery) would have stayed."

Your own map shows slavery spreading through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona & California, and that's just from cotton.
And, contrary to your repeated claims, slavery was in no way restricted to large cotton plantations -- that's ridiculous.
In fact, slaves were used anywhere and everywhere tightly controlled manual labor was required, including cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, wheat, factories, railroads, ships, and many more.

DiogenesLamp: "I have maintained all along, that the greater wealth flowing through the South as a consequence of independence would have eventually caused these other states to leave the USA and join the CSA.
The Farmers could have shipped their grains and cattle to Europe down the Mississippi, and European goods could have flowed back up the Mississippi in exchange.
Nobody would have had to pay the gouging rates of the North Eastern owned and operated rail road system that was mostly created with government collusion."

Complete nonsense, for the following reasons:

1. No Northern state would accept slavery as their price for joining the CSA.

2. Using Confederate ports would mean paying tariffs twice for imports, plus once even for exports.
   The extra taxes would more than outweigh transportation costs from, say, Illinois to Eastern ports via railroads, Great Lakes or river canals.

3. That Southerners would abandon Northern suppliers in favor of European imports or their own manufactures is certainly possible, but likely not without politically enforced separations.
   But if the Confederate government tried to prevent Southerners from trading with Union state producers, the results would just as likely lead to war as did the events at Forts Sumter & Pickens.

DiogenesLamp: "Look up the "Grangers" to understand what I am talking about."

Sure, I "get" Granges were a response to problems created by monopolistic railroads & other big businesses of the time.
It's one reason why today there are only ~200,000 miles of US railroads (half that of a hundred years ago) and over 4 million miles of highways.
It's why 70% of US freight today ships via trucks, not railroads -- with trucks there are nearly infinite choices, with railroads usually only one.

But that was never a function of Union vs. Confederate, and even without the Mississippi River for transport, western producers still had several options for shipping to eastern cities & ports -- railroads, Great Lakes shipping, rivers & canals.
Some of these would be more expensive than steamboats on the Mighty Muddy, but not more than paying extra tariffs to the CSA.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Lincoln supported the Corwin amendment.
Of course you treat his support as if it didn't exist because you are flexible in your interpretation of any particular topic."

Nonsense, because Corwin began as a Democrat effort to stop further secessions, was supported by 100% of Democrats, including President Buchanan and opposed by the majority of Republicans.
Corwin was the only one of several similar proposals which Lincoln did not actively oppose, and that only because he considered it to be no change to existing practice.

What's totally illegitimate here are your efforts to reinterpret Corwin as something new, Republican & endorsed by Lincoln, when in fact it was none of those.

DiogenesLamp: "Poppycock.
It's clearly support.
So is sending letters to the governors of the various states, which it is not the responsibility of a President to do."

I think we can settle this pretty simply.
On a scale of one to ten, with ten being Lincoln's support for the 13th Amendment and zero being strict hands-off neutrality, I would put Democrat President Buchanan's actual support for Corwin at 10 and Lincoln's alleged "support" at a one, or two.

You would put it where, and why?

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "And so it's a coincidence that the most Unionized states consistently vote liberal?
Why do you think there seems to be a strong correlation between Unionization and Liberal voting patterns?"

The fact is that historically Democrats embraced Unions, while Republicans favored small business owners.
So naturally most (but never all) Union voters went where they felt most loved -- voted Democrats.

But in this long historical picture there are two Republican names which stand out in stark contrast: Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.
Both were able to attract enough Union voters to reverse the general tide of history.

• Reagan because he was both a Union member and Union president.
• Trump by promising to "put Americans first".
  In the first days of Trump's presidency he met with both business and Union leaders and got some very positive words from them.

I can't say what the latest trends are, but as of recent years Unions are nearly a non-factor outside government employees.

[BroJoeK]

quoting BJK: "But the fact is that many Founders recognized immediately that 'all men are created equal' also applied to their own slaves."

DiogenesLamp: "Ought to apply to their own slaves.
Jefferson didn't free any.
In the theoretical, abstract sense, yes.
In the practical, painfully economic sense, no."

Jefferson and other Southern Founders rightfully get credit not only for their "flowery language" in the Declaration and elsewhere, but also for ending international imports of slaves, for abolition in the Northwest Territories and for proposing a Federal plan of gradual compensated emancipation.

Indeed, the whole question of abolition in Southern states remained open until several years after Jefferson's death, when Virginia finally debated & rejected abolition in 1832.
After that for Southerners slavery went from being a "necessary evil" to an unquestionable moral virtue.

[BroJoeK]

Pelham: "Mason’s argument resulted in the compromise that allowed for banning the slave trade in 1808."

Right, and the key fact you seem determined to ignore is that the majority of Founders, whether they owned slaves or not, favored gradual emancipation, meaning in steps, beginning with outlawing international imports of slaves, abolition in the Northwest Territories and individual state-by-state abolition.

DiogenesLamp: "Our John Brown Fan Club likes to make excuses for the Founders who were slave owners."

No excuses needed -- our Founders inherited slavery from the British Empire and began almost immediately to restrict & abolish it.
Only their children & grandchildren decades later began to decide that slavery was a positive good which must be preserved at all costs.

Pelham: "Well that’s one way to ignore the fact that London issued two emancipation decrees 90 years before Lincoln.
It saves you from addressing the issue of whether or not morality was on the side of King George or the secessionist rebels of 1776."

I gather the two Brits involved, Dunmore & Clinton, had no moral objections to slavery itself, simply hoped to use it as a military weapon against the Continental Army.
In Civil War terms, they only declared slaves "contraband of war".

Lincoln, by contrast, had opposed slavery from his childhood and followed up his wartime emancipations with the peacetime 13th Amendment, making it permanent.

The Brits didn't outlaw slavery in their empire for another 40+ years after Dunmore & Clinton.

[DiogenesLamp]

I find it amusing that you spend the time creating your tidal waves of noise, and I can simply dismiss your efforts like this:

Skip.

:)

[rockrr]

Call it a grand day of amusement then because that is exactly the treatment your various flights of fantasy (delusion) receive.

Skip

;’}

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I find it amusing that you spend the time creating your tidal waves of noise, and I can simply dismiss your efforts like this:
Skip."

On Free Republic everyone is totally free to respond or not as they see fit.
There's no "law" saying you must do anything about any post.

But your (or others) significant failures to respond suggest at least insufficient arguments if not outright tacit agreements.

I chose to think that if you had a good response, you'd post it, but you don't, and that's important.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp Pelham: "Our John Brown Fan Club..."

Sorry for the typo. :-(

[DiogenesLamp]

I don't care, because I don't read them. I've read enough of them in the past to realize it's just a regurgitation of "Nonsense!" and such.

Anyone thinking Pearl Harbor is the same as Ft. Sumter, is too far out in la la land to take seriously.

[DiogenesLamp]

I chose to think that if you had a good response, you'd post it, but you don't, and that's important.

It is precisely because of your tendency to already have your mind made up about what you "chose to think" that it is pointless to engage with you.

You have no objectivity, and you don't even pretend to have any, so why bother? It's like trying to convince a Packers fan to like the Eagles.

Waste of time to engage.