(cotton harvester)
Posted on 04/17/2006 8:22:15 AM PDT by LS
Now more than ever, Republicans should take great pride in our Party's heritage of civil rights achievement. They should remember the words of Joseph Rainey, the South Carolina Republican and former slave who was the first African-American to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives: "We love freedom more, vastly more, than slavery; consequently, we hope to keep clear of the Democrats!" And, it was Mary Terrell, an African-American Republican who co-founded the NAACP, who declared: "Every right that has been bestowed upon blacks was initiated by the Republican Party."
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
The Texas Republican Party was formed on July 4, 1867, in Houston by 150 black and 20 white Texans.
2 of the first 3 statewide leaders of the Republican Party of Texas were black
It was proposed by Sumner and Stevens, but Lincoln wanted to "restore" the Union---hence he was remakably charitable to the Rebs ("with malice toward none, with charity for all"). His primary goal of restoring the Union remained. However, we don't know what he would have done with the Sumner/Stevens plan, because he was killed before Congress could really debate it. I personally doubt he would have signed it, as he missed his window, which was the moment the South seceded.
Hmm, so failure in one area completely negates one of the greatest feats in human history on the other? Gimme a break, and get hold of reality.
Yes, it's also interesting that while some of the "Neo-Confeds" hasten to point out that a tiny handful of blacks "fought" for the Confederacy (most experts say less than 1% of all blacks who were "in military service," i.e., as cooks and laborers in uniform), they routinely ignore the fact that more than 80,000 WHITE southerners fought for the Union, including units named the First Alabama Cavlary, the Mississippi Rifles, and an Arkansas cavalry regiment, not to mention 40,000 Tennesseeans.
John Wilkes Booth killed slavery with one shot.
His assassination of Lincoln left a terrible desire for vengeance in its wake. The South was taxed nearly to death and ground under the boot heel of the Union as a result. If Lincoln hadn't been shot, his plans for rebuilding the Union would likely have proceeded and as a result would probably not have settled the slavery issue as totally as it was by the policies of the government after he died.
Just my take on it.
Hmm, so failure in one area completely negates one of the greatest feats in human history on the other?
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Being one of the last western nations to abolish slavery, and having to fight the most deadly war of our history to do so, doesn't really rise up to the level of "one of the greatest feats in human history", IMHO.
The founders knew slavery was wrong, but also knew that addressing the issue at that time would have meant no nation.
I also wonder if the GOP intends to trumpet the fact that abolishing slavery also put the federal government into the driver's seat vis a vis states rights.
I sincerely doubt that. Most Dems are so ignorant they aren't aware of any of this. (I resisted the tempation to use the word Stupid)
White men with rifles.In Black Rednecks and White Liberals, Thomas Sowell points out that slavery existed as an accepted institution unchallenged throughout history, worldwide, until the Eighteenth Century. Throughout that long era Christians did not reject the institution (for other than themselves and their kin) any more than the Hindus or the pagans or the Buddhists or the Confuscians or the Muslims did.
No literature existed anywhere to defend the institution of slavery before the such literature started to appear in the American south, because until then the institution of slavery had never been under consistent and determined attack. Christians didn't begin to mount effective opposition to the institution of slavery until the Eighteenth Century but no other cultural ifluence ever has mounted such opposition.
The British underwent the expense of maintaining a naval squadron off the west coast of Africa for no other purpose than suppressing the slave trade which - apart from the moral issue - was absolutely no skin off Britain's nose. Indeed, the purpose of the Emancipation Proclamation - which "freed" only those slaves where its writ did not run - was to take the possibility of British recognition of the Confederacy off the table. The British industrial revolution was centered in its fabric mills, and those mills ran on cotton; the British economic interest alone would have dictated British recognition of the Confederacy, which could have doomed Union efforts to suppress the Confederacy. But with the Lincoln Administration having officially stipulated that the Civil WAr was not only about defending the Union but about abolishing slavery, British opposition to slavery precluded British support for the Confederacy.
The (huge) British Empire continued to exert pressure against slavery, inducing people who had no interest in its abolition to assent for the sake of relations with Britain.
(cotton harvester)
I think you mean "What would it have done to an economy almost exclusively dependent on agriculture?" Since slavery was used not only for cotton but also tobacco and rice, and to some extent indigo. Of these tobacco was considered the least onerous re: slaves, while rice was far and away considered the most brutal.
OK, what would it have done to an economy almsot exclusively dependent on agricutlure?
Yah. A lot of truth to that. L. was the one man who could have both browbeaten the whites into some reasonable acceptance of blacks, and at the same time tempered the calls by blacks such as Fred. Douglass for immediate social equality, which wasn't going to happen.
This was absolutely astounding, for a nation to take such an economic "hit" for a moral issue, and that, after all was what the Civil War was really about.
I didn't like this book: the first part was fanstastic, but a couple of the other essays were less than thrilling.
While I am unsure re: the situation re: rice, by the 1860 the market -- both nationwide and int'l -- for tobacco/tobacco products had been in a glut for nearly twenty years. Most slave owners in the central southern states, VA, etc, in fact made ends meet by selling "excess" slaves, tobacco being, as it were, sort money losing side-line to add a veneer of respectability.
However, unlike tobacco there was a huge, seemingly never-ending, ever increasing demand -- both nationwide and on int'l markets -- for cotton, esp. American cotton. New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, etc. would loan the southern farmer money on the condition that he plant cotton -- for they knew there was a eager market for that product. So, more and more, the southern farmer (of any size but the very smallest) stopped a (healthy) diversity of crops and came to plant cotton...nothing but cotton. B/c that's where the money was, and b/c that is the one crop bankers would loan him money on and for.
It wasn't called "King Cotton" for no reason.
(Given the day and age and financial situtation, it's hard to believe that even with 40-acres-and-a-mule that the freed slave would, on average, have achieved much more than a subsistance level.)
On the other hand, Lincoln had advocated passage of the 13th amendment, insisting that it be included in the 1864 Republican platform. After it had passed congress, he'd signed it and sent it to the states. So his position pushing for total abolition is well established at the time of his death.
John Wilkes Booth killed slavery with one shot.
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Wrong. John Wilkes Booth killed President Lincoln. The machine (age) killed slavery in America and in every other civilized nation; look at where slavery still exists, or existed until very recently.
Doesn't matter. Too many of the blacks headed straight back to the plantation. No amount history will change the attitude "What will you give me this time?"
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