Posted on 04/23/2019 1:19:22 AM PDT by 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...
(Excerpt) Read more at acton.org ...
The problems affecting rural blacks are the same problems facing rural whites. Agriculture has been mostly usurped by huge Agribusinesses with billions of capital behind them. Also, mechanization has simply made the cost of food much cheaper, and not so many farm workers are needed to create it.
In fact, I see the "Jobs" issue as being a dire problem for the foreseeable future. People must have work at which they can earn a living. This is important for people's happiness, but in some circumstances, it's very hard to develop income when you don't have special skills or talents or capital to get you going.
I feel for these people, but I haven't yet grown wise enough to have the answers to these problems. Maybe in a few years or so. :)
I know. I understand. He is the bane of your existence. Now he is responsible for abortion.
You might be curious to learn that Lincoln had very different plans for the South, and even the Union, after the War, than what took place. His plans changed when a bullet tore into the back of his skull. That caused the North to come down hard on the South. Lincoln’s plan had been to “let them up easy”,...... “to bind the nations wounds”.....”with malice toward none”. But you know this, it is on your mind 24/7.
Tell me, why did the South secede?
Plenty of rural residents didn't go to church. There might not even be a church in the area, or the head of the household might not get along with the minister. There would be a revival and people would get religion and attend church, but then they would backslide.
Single men also may not have been especially likely to attend church. Professionals like lawyers were more likely to attend church, as were married people and those with children. Church membership was taken seriously, and not everyone who attended services became a church member.
Now you suggested that Herndon (Lincoln's law partner) had some sort of agenda that would make him lie about Lincoln for some reason. What agenda could that have been?
Herndon was an unbeliever himself and wanted to make Lincoln look like someone who thought the same way. Herndon's view of what Lincoln believed also changed with time and what he wrote in his book is contradicted by what he said at other times. David Donald wrote whole book about Herndon and Lincoln, called Lincoln's Herndon if you are really interested.
How could the claim that Lincoln was an atheist have ever gotten any traction?
He was a freethinker. That could mean somebody who thought for themselves and didn't just accept orthodoxy. A freethinker could also mean an atheist. Words like "skeptic" and "unbeliever" can also be interpreted in different ways. Because Lincoln didn't think as other people did, there was much speculation about what he did believe by people who usually didn't know.
It's clear that Lincoln's views changed over his lifetime. I can't say with certainty what he believed at every moment in his life. I'm not an expert in any of this. I just point out that whatever was true of Lincoln at 25 wasn't true throughout his lifetime, and that Herndon's not always a reliable source.
So tell us where slaveowner George Washington rates in your Pandaemonium of evildoers.
Tell me why you defend the African slave trade based on what historical figures participated in doing? Like I stated before, the African slave trade was an abomination, no excuses from so called religious figures (Even the climate in the Caribbean and Southern States) using "precedence".
I don't know about caricatures, but we do have plenty of characters around these parts. I would be interested in any data to support the theory that southerners, slave holders or otherwise, were any less religious than inhabitants of any other region. I find it hard to believe.
We should not consider it at all since there is no evidence whatsoever that Lincoln said it.
There was a spectrum of different religious views in both sections, with more fervor in the North than we now expect, and less outright irreligion in either region than we have today. Northerners were more likely to become Unitarian if they had doubts, rather than stay with one of the more established churches. With a few very small exceptions, Southern churches sidestepped -- indeed, defended -- slavery.
This is going to rub some fur the wrong way, especially among liberals.
When did you move dear....I bet you moved near where I finished high school in 1975
If true. And why is "owners" in quotation marks? Is the author implying that slaves weren't really owned? That it was really some sort of partnership?
About 4 months ago. We’re loving it.
I travel a lot and sometimes drive through small towns where I see more bars than churches, and the bars are all open, some churches closed.
But in the small town nearest my home in central PA, we have six churches and no bars.
Road safety signs here say, "DUI -- you can't afford it".
No, I don't have a theory on this, just sayin' -- don't only count the churches in your town, count the bars too, they'll tell you something more.
Funniest thing i've read so far today.
Tell me, why did the South secede?
So they could run their own affairs without sending the greater share of their profits to New York and Washington DC.
So far as the Declaration of Independence says, their reasons for seceding are immaterial. The only thing required to justify independence is the desire for it.
So Springfield Illinois might not have had a church close enough for him to attend?
It's clear that Lincoln's views changed over his lifetime.
He certainly claims that his views changed. I wonder if he started attending church after he declared that he had embraced Christianity?
You see, my problem in understanding this is I am not convinced that Abraham Lincoln wasn't an opportunistic liar. If he was, then his statements are less persuasive. They might be true, they might not be true. If I were to believe "Honest Abe" was in fact honest, I would have no worries. If he says so, it would have to be accepted as true, but I am no longer convinced that this view of Lincoln is correct. What if he is a liar and this stuff is just said for political expediency?
I have to keep both possibilities open until I can find what I regard as convincing proof, one way or the other.
But apart from that, Lincoln appears to be about as close to an Atheist as I think we've ever had. Maybe Jefferson perhaps, but I think he mostly kept it a secret.
DiogenesLamp: "Yes, I know.
I've been saying that for years.
Christian "children of God" doctrine, contradicts the notion that some people are better than others, which is the very foundation of slavery.
And yet your Lost Cause myth wants us to believe that Northerners only cared about the economics of slavery -- Northerners just didn't want to compete against slaves for wages, you tell us endlessly.
You deny over & over that religion or morality or, God forbid, "the milk of human kindness" motivated Republicans to oppose slavery.
No! According to DiogenesLamp it was all just "Northeastern Power Brokers" grabbing control of "money flows from Europe", and the morality of slavery had nothing to do with it, right?
But here now it seems you confess differently -- now you do admit it really was Christian teaching after all, which Northerners learned in church and drove their opposition to slavery, regardless of economic factors.
So the big question becomes whether DiogenesLamp is intellectually capable of experiencing what's called "cognitive dissonance"?
I know for certain you do know the term.
Quaker and Puritans vs. Anglican Cavaliers
Apparently neither was John Stuart, his first law partner.
"John T. Stuart, Lincoln's first law partner: "He was an avowed and open infidel, and sometimes bordered on Atheism...He went further against Christian beliefs and doctrines and principles than any man I ever heard."
Herndon, Lamon, and now Stuart? Why did Lincoln surround himself with such liars?
Oh, and this guy too!
"Lincoln in a letter to Judge J.S. Wakefield, after the death of Willie Lincoln: "My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them."
"This war would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits. We owe it to popery that we now see our land reddened with the blood of her noblest sons. Though there were great differences of opinion between the South and the North on the question of slavery, neither Jeff Davis nor anyone of the leading men of the Confederacy would have dared to attack the North, had they not relied on the promises of the Jesuits, that, under the mask of Democracy, the money and the arms of the Roman Catholic, even the arms of France were at their disposal, if they would attack us. I pity the priests, the bishops and monks of Rome in the United States, when the people realize that they are, in great part, responsible for the tears and the blood shed in this war. I conceal what I know, on that subject, from the knowledge of the nation; for if the people knew the whole truth, this war would turn into a religious war, and it would at once, take a tenfold more savage and bloody character. It would become merciless as all religious wars are. It would become a war of extermination on both sides. The Protestants of both the North and the South would surely unite to exterminate the priests and the Jesuits, if they could hear what Professor Morse has said to me of the plots made in the very city of Rome to destroy this Republic, and if they could learn how the priests, the nuns, and the monks, which daily land on our shores, under the pretext of preaching their religion, instructing the people in their schools, taking care of the sick in the hospitals, are nothing else but the emissaries of the Pope, of Napoleon, and the other despots of Europe, to undermine our institutions, alienate the hearts of our people from our constitution, and our laws, destroy our schools, and prepare a reign of anarchy here as they have done in Ireland, in Mexico, in Spain, and wherever there are any people who want to be free."
And:
Is it not an absurdity to give to a man a thing which he is sworn to hate, curse, and destroy? And does not the Church of Rome hate, curse and destroy liberty of conscience whenever she can do it safely? I am for liberty of conscience in its noblest, broadest, highest sense. But I cannot give liberty of conscience to the Pope and to his followers, the Papists, so long as they tell me, through all their councils, theologians, and canon laws, that their conscience orders them to burn my wife, strangle my children, and cut my throat when they find their opportunity! This does not seem to be understood by the people today. But sooner or later, the light of common sense will make it clear to everyone that no liberty of conscience can be granted to men who are sworn to obey a Pope, who pretends to have the right to put to death those who differ from him in religion.
Might be bullsh*t. It certainly seems sensationalized to cause outrage. The guy who wrote it claims to be a priest, so I don't know.
Well likely none that will convince you anyways. You might want to look at some other things Lincoln was reported to have said and by whom are claimed to have reported them.
If that anti-Catholic screed claimed to have been said by Lincoln is correct, it makes it all the more plausible to believe Lincoln was very much anti-religion in general.
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