Posted on 09/17/2007 2:35:27 PM PDT by Delacon
Yep. That's pretty much true.
The Islamists have zero moral right to rebel against the government of the US, as their rights are not being infringed, regardless of what they may think.
The DOI does not subscribe to relativism. People HAVE certain rights regardless of what they or others may think.
I agree with everything you said.
It is notable that one American who never condemned southerners as a group for being saddled with slavery was A. Lincoln. He once said that he wouldn’t know how to end the practice himself if he were given all power, so he couldn’t really condemn others for not being able to end it.
But there is a major difference between recognizing that an evil institution is very difficult to get rid of, and proclaiming that it is a good, even being willing to start and continue one of the bloodiest wars in history to protect the institution against distant threats.
I agree.
My disagreement with slaves in Brazil being exponentially more common was with regard to the number of slaves at the time of emancipation, not the number imported over several centuries, on which you are correct.
Slaves in Brazil and the Caribbean were cheap, due to location and shipping costs. It was cheaper to work slaves to death and buy new ones than to keep them alive and breed children. This also tied in to primarily males being shipped to these areas, rather than both sexes as to North America, which was a lot farther away, making slaves more expensive.
Another factor was that the sugar plantation work was notoriously brutal labor, leading to high death rates among the slaves. Cotton and tobacco raising was not nearly as hard.
Also, whites in the sugar planting areas were usually in a distinct minority, leading to (justified) paranoia and unbelievable brutality to keep the majority under control.
Jefferson was known to sell slaves when he needed money. More important, though, is the fact that upon his death he only freed Sally Hemmings' family. The rest of his slaves--130 of them--were auctioned off.
To John W. EppesMonticello June 30. [18]20.
I consider a woman who brings a child every two years as more profitable than the best man of the farm. what she produces is an addition to capital, while his labors disappear in mere consumption...(Farm Book, 45-46).
It is relevant that Jefferson died rather deeply in debt. His creditors had a claim on his slaves, so he wasn’t really free to emancipate them.
OTOH, he could have lived a little less lavishly and gotten out of debt so he could free his slaves.
G. Washington unostentatiously not only freed but made financial provision for the care of his slaves in his will.
So you maybe wouldn't want to be Jefferson's slave, but one of Washington's, so that you could be assured that you'd be freed once he died, and your children (what Jefferson called "an addition to capital") wouldn't be sold.
Unfortunately, slavery didn't operate on the basis of slave choosing master.
If he had then by Virginia law those freed slaves would have had 12 months in which to vacate the commonwealth or else they could be sold back into slavery.
LOL. You have obviously never read the propaganda spread by the Southern Secession Comissioners -- the paid propagandists of the slave owning aristrocrats. Here's an example. Speech of Fulton Anderson [Mississippi Secession Comissioner] to the Virginia [Secession] Convention
This action of the Convention of Mississippi, gentlemen of the Convention, was the inevitable result of the position which she, with other slaveholding States, had already taken, in view of the anticipated result of the recent Presidential election, and must have been foreseen by every intelligent observer of the progress of events.I As early as the 10th of February, 1860, her Legislature had, with the general approbation of her people, adopted the following resolution:
"Resolved, That the election of a President of the United States by the votes of one section of the Union only, on the ground that there exists an irrepressible conflict between the two sections in reference to their respective systems of labor and with an avowed purpose of hostility to the institution of slavery, as it prevails in the Southern States, and as recognized in the compact of Union, would so threaten a destruction of the ends for which the Constitution was formed, as to justify the slaveholding States in taking council together for their separate protection and safety."
This was the ground taken, gentlemen, not only by Mississippi, but by other slaveholding States, in view of the then threatened purpose, of a party founded upon the idea of unrelenting and eternal hostility to the institution of slavery, to take possession of the power of the Government and use it to our destruction. It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the Northern people did not have ample warning of the disastrous and fatal consequences that would follow the success of that party in the election, and impartial history will emblazon it to future generations, that it was their folly, their recklessness and their ambition, not ours, which shattered into pieces this great confederated Government, and destroyed this great temple of constitutional liberty which their ancestors and ours erected, in the hope that their descendants might together worship beneath its roof as long as time should last.
But, in defiance of the warning thus given and of the evidences accumulated from a thousand other sources, that the Southern people would never submit to the degradation implied in the result of such an election, that sectional party, bounded by a geographical line which excluded it from the possibility of obtaining a single electoral vote in the Southern States, avowing for its sentiment implacable hatred to us, and for its policy the destruction of our institutions, and appealing to Northern prejudice, Northern passion, Northern ambition and Northern hatred of us, for success, thus practically disfranchizing the whole body of the Southern people, proceeded to the nomination of a candidate for the Presidency who, though not the most conspicuous personage in its ranks, was yet the truest representative of its destructive principles.
The steps by which it proposed to effect its purposes, the ultimate extinction of slavery, and the degradation of the Southern people, are too familiar to require more than a passing allusion from me.
Under the false pretence of restoring the government to the original principles of its founders, but in defiance and contempt of those principles, it avowed its purpose to take possession of every department of power, executive, legislative and judicial, to employ them in hostility to our institutions. By a corrupt exercise of the power of appointment to office, they proposed to pervert the judicial power from its true end and purpose, that of defending and preserving the Constitution. to be the willing instrument of its purposes of wrong and oppression. In the meantime it proposed to disregard the decisions of that august tribunal, and by the exertion of bare-faced power, to exclude slavery from the public Territory, the common property of all the States, and to abolish the internal slave trade between the States acknowledging the legality of that institution.
It proposed further to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and in all places within the Territory of the several States, subject under the Constitution to the jurisdiction of Congress, and to refuse hereafter under all circumstances, admission into the Union of any State with a Constitution recognizing the institution of slavery.
Having thus placed the institution of slavery, upon which rests not only the whole wealth of the Southern people, but their very social and political existence, under the condemnation of a government established for the common benefit, it proposed in the future, to encourage immigration into the public Territory, by giving the public land to immigrant settlers, so as, within a brief time, to bring into the Union free States enough to enable it to abolish slavery within the States themselves.
What if they claim that the federal government has become destructive towards their goal of an Islamic state and that they are trying to free Michigan from the tyranny of the Christian U.S. government? Would that make it OK?
"What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. This conviction, sir, was the main cause. It is true, sir, that the effect of this conviction was strengthened by a further conviction that such a separation would be the best remedy for the fugitive slave evil, and also the best, if not the only remedy, for the territorial evil. But, doubtless, if it had not been for the first conviction this step would never have been taken."
I'll allow Southern Secession Comissioners [from Alabama] Garrott and Smith explain the Ponzi trap the slave owning aristrocrats found themselves in and why expansion of slavery was a vital necessity from their point of view.
Letter from Isham Garrott and Robert H. Smith of Alabama to the Governor and legislature of North Carolina The election of a President of the United States, of any opinion, however heretical, and however much calculated to disturb the public mind, would, of itself, we think, be considered by our people is of secondary importance; but the recent Presidential election is the inauguration of a system of Government as opposed to the Constitution as it is to our rights and safety. It ushers in, as a settled policy, not only the exclusion of the people of the South from the common Territories of the country, but proposes to impair the value of slave property in the States by unfriendly legislation; to prevent the further spread of slavery by surrounding us with free States; to refuse admission into the Union of another slave State, and by these means to render the institution itself dangerous to us, and to compel us, as slaves increase, to abandon it, or be doomed to a servile war. The establishment alone of the policy of the Republican party, that no more slave States are to be admitted into the Union, and that slavery is to be forever prohibited in the Territories (the common property of the United States), must, of itself, at no distant day, result in the utter ruin and degradation of most, if not all of the Gulf States.Alabama has at least eight slaves to every square mile of her tillable soil. This population outstrips any race on the globe in the rapidity of its increase; and if the slaves now in Alabama are to be restricted within her present limits, doubling as they do once in less than thirty years, the children are now born who will be compelled to flee from the land of their birth, and from the slaves their parents have toiled to acquire as an inheritance for them, or to submit to the degradation of being reduced to an equality with them, and all its attendant horrors. Our people and institutions Must be secured the right of expansion, and they can never submit to a denial of that which is essential to their very existence.
Mr. Benning wasn't very bright, was he?
He thought reposessing fugitive slaves and being allowed to take slaves into the territories would be easier across international boundaries than state lines?
LOL
It would have been easier if the Confederate States Army crossed the border first, which was exactly the intention of the more militant leadership. They were expansionists and made no secret of their desire to colonize, by force, Cuba, Mexico and even all of Central America. They first had to dispose of the 'pasty-faced mechanics' in the Union Army which proved to be far more difficult than the Fire Eaters of 1860 promised.
I realize some thought they could conquer the territories, as indeed they tried to do.
But I fail to see how recapturing a fugitive slave from Kentucky who has crossed into Ohio would be easier after the South had won its independence. The only way that would work would be for them to conquer and rule the North directly, which kind of puts a crimp in their original justification for secession. Even then, they just move their problem to the Canadian border.
The fugitive slave thing was never a major factor economically and from the Deep South cotton states, hardly a factor at all. There, only those slaves living in seaport towns had any realistic hope of escape and in the Upper South, most of those who escaped were from Maryland and Kentucky --- neither of which were upset about it enough to secede from the Union.
Fugitive slavery did serve as a political club to beat Northern politicians with, but contrary to the Underground Railroad mythology that has grown up in recent decades, very few slaves ever made a successful escape to freedom. Perhaps a few hundred a year (if that) of the 4 million slaves. The 'slave patrols' in most states were quite effective in catching the vast majority of run aways long before they ever got near 'Free' territory.
In my family we call it the war of Northern Aggression.
But its an odd article that purports to tell Libertarians how they should think.
You’re probably right about the numbers.
What incensed southerners was the fact that northerners would try to prevent them from recapturing their “property.” For some reason this really infuriated them.
In a recent book I read, southerners in northern prisons wrote home about their fears that they would be “exchanged” for a black Union soldier. They would all, quite literally, rather stay in prison or die there than be exchanged for a black man.
Brit colonialism too was more benign and effective obviously than their contemporaries
folks like to blame climate too...lol...usually proposed by folks who haven’t lived in the Deep South which is Godawful hot and sticky 5 months of the year.
Sugar cane....a beast....still is. I’ve watched it manually harvested in Jamaica and West Palm County FL....very hard work...and hot...firing off the green in late summer heat has to be a mean job and then all the chopping
ironically I think in the US, it’s mostly Haitians and Jamaicans and Dominicans who do it
indeed slavery importation to Brasil was cheaper...so much closer to Portuguese West Africa and even some from Mozambique
likewise most of the Caribbean was closer too and a bit cheaper I’d guess though the slaves in Jamaica fared better than in Saint Dominigue for attitude reasons mentioned a second ago.
Yep....in the Caribbean they were terrified of slave uprisings especially after Haiti and the bloodletting there living up to their worst fears....likewise the Cape Verde revolts must have scared Brasil too.
I have lived and worked in Jamaica, Haiti, Brasil, and other former tropical slave sites and in Sierra Leone..an origin country. My ex wife is Brasilian and a former serious love was Jamaican although of the former slaver owning class admittedly both from Haiti and then fled to Jamaica in 1798. I am 6th generation Mississippian as well.
The legacy of slavery is a big part of my culture but differently than it would be for a black man of course but it’s no distant topic to me and neither blacks period the world over. They have been a major part of my social interaction for nearly 50 years although less so now since Nashville is not terribly black for the South so social interaction is more limited than in Mississippi or Alabama.
Slavery throughout history is a fascinating topic and one to be debated forever I guess but the attitudes ebb and flow.
It has only recently become so much less a common experience for most cultures.
I’m not sure of any world religion that condemns it though we surely do...and justifiably in today’s world particularly but it could come back and would most likely be the worst sort born of conquest.
The Chinese for example would have little qualms about it if they needed it to feed their teeming masses
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