This says it all.
"It had some good points"
This says it all.
Now note how totally, you have taken my post out of all context. I repeat the post to which you replied, with the quote that you used underlined, so that it may be seen more clearly:
You will not find any post of mine about "how great slavery was." You are the one obsessed with that particular system, not I. It had some good points, one must admit; but the underlying premise was certainly wrong, and ill advised--but so too are the demeaning underlying premises of the American Welfare State, and the Bush foreign policy. Was slavery even worse? I am not that judgmental of a system that is clearly sanctioned in the Bible, and which has existed in many forms, throughout the historic period, in every region of the earth.
My points, in repeatedly challenging the South haters, is that their obsession insults the American tradition and divides traditional Americans, at a time when we are losing more and more of our common heritage. I attack you, because you sabotage what I believe in; you slander the freely entered into Union of proud States, where it was understood that we would not interfere with each others' unique customs. For you, that frustrates your need--compulsion, apparently--to slander the South. But it also means that I, who identify with the Jeffersonians, must accept and respect the right of the people in New England to pursue their more strait laced value systems; the right of Massachusetts, to this day, to impose absurd policies on its people, etc., etc..
You know, respect begets respect, and contempt invites contempt. Your lack of respect for the Old South invites the disrespect for other things that you value. It is a short dead end street, which rapidly ends meaningful and mutually beneficial discussion. It is pathetic.
While some of the Leftist historians may see history as a battle between good and evil, where the rich property owners are always evil and the poor peasants and workers are always good, generally Western Historians do not demonize different cultures, they simply analyze them, discussing their strengths and weaknesses, but not making themselves look like ignorant, ranting fanatics, by making half-baked, moral judgments.
You, not I and not the Southerners whom you insult, is the one hung up on slavery. But curiously, you only seem to want to rant about slavery in the American South, among your fellow countrymen. You do not rant about it in the Bible, nor in ancient China--or for that matter in some areas of modern China. You do not rant about the feudal era in Europe; do not claim that Charlemagne or Frederick Barbarosa were savage devils. You do not concern yourself with slavery in the golden age of Greece or Rome, etc.. No, your "moral" rectitude is something you trot out not as an historian, interested in an objective study of history, but as a whip to marginalize Southern Conservatives, who are more devoted than you to the historic values of the Founding Fathers.
Now, let us dissect my admission that while I think slavery a bad system, "it had some good points." One of those good points was in the devotion of the participants to each other--something you of course deny. But there was more genuine kindness between the races in the Old South than there is today.
Another point is the health of the people. The Prudential Life Insurance company conducted a study in the 1890s on the plight of the Negro in the South, and demonstrated a tremendous fall off in the health and position of the free men, a generation after emancipation. It was published by their chief Actuary, Frederick L. Hoffmann.
Is health care a reason to deplore personal freedom? Of course not. (I am on record as very strongly deploring the President's extension of Medicare, for an example of where I stand on such an idea.) So do not suggest that I am saying that it is. But as an historian, you should be willing to accept the good with the bad--that is if you do not have a primary motive as an advocate of something else!
And as an historian, you should understand, that in very few of the world's systems--the systems of the present day--are the citizens/subjects as free as Americans at the time of the Constitutional compact. There are all forms of involuntary servitude, all degrees. The world is not a case of black and white, no pun intended, in the way that you seem to imagine, or want to believe.
William Flax