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To: livius
Most southerners didn’t own slaves, lower income whites actually resented slave labor because it enabled the wealthy to avoid hiring workers they would have to pay, and nobody - except for the Middletons, the Moultries, the Pinkneys and their ilk - thought this would be a good idea in any way.

This is why most northerners hated slavery too. We are led to believe that Northerners hated slavery because of concern for black people, but this is as far from the truth as it is possible to get. They hated slavery for two main reasons.

1. It took away wages for people who would be paid to perform work. People who trade their labor for money saw slavery as a threat to their livelihood.

2. Northern people absolutely hated blacks, and did not want them in their communities. Slavery caused blacks to associate with whites, and the very prejudiced whites wanted none of that.

3. A third and lesser reason is they hated the rich slave owner getting rich without having to work for it. This was an envy driven hatred.

179 posted on 08/01/2022 12:45:40 PM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: DiogenesLamp

Northern people didn’t particularly hate blacks, but by the mid-19th century, there was certainly discrimination, which was why the USCT was so controversial. Many people in the Union Army, btw, weren’t even Northerners, but Irish or other immigrants hired off the docks by wealthy people to take their places in the draft.

Beginning to see a pattern here? One Tennessean said the war was a war of the few (wealthy people) against the many (the rest of us, Southern or Northern, white or black).

Sounds kinda familiar.


366 posted on 08/02/2022 12:52:49 PM PDT by livius
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