What about the black slave owners?

http://americancivilwar.com/authors/black_slaveowners.htm ^ | 5-5-10 | edcoil

[edcoil]

In an 1856 letter to his wife Mary Custis Lee, Robert E. Lee called slavery "a moral and political evil." Yet he concluded that black slaves were immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially and physically.

The fact is large numbers of free Negroes owned black slaves; in fact, in numbers disproportionate to their representation in society at large. In 1860 only a small minority of whites owned slaves. According to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million whites in the country. Some eight million of them lived in the slaveholding states.

The census also determined that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned slaves (1). Even if all slaveholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of whites in the country (or 4.8 percent of southern whites owning one or more slaves).

[pinochet]

>>>>This black, Washington Post liberal, thanked the slavers for getting his ancestors to America, after he served in Africa as the WP Africa Bureau Chief

I read Keith Richburg’s book. He is thankful for the fact that he lives in freedom in America. He would not want to be a slave. He is glad that it was his grandfather, and not him, who got enslaved. But he is glad that the tragic fact of his grandfather’s enslavement, enabled him to end up in America. Being in America is like winning the lottery of life.

But nobody wants to be a slave. You can experiment by approaching a homeless man on the streets, or on a park bench. You can ask him whether he would prefer to be enslaved, in exchange for three meals a day, and a roof over his head. He would not accept such a deal.

[ansel12]

I was disagreeing about your Soviet comparison, as far as if slavery is such a big deal to Africans that they will stop doing it, they haven’t yet.

Slavery and Africans are still a part of life.

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

I am sure he has never learned in school how common it was for whites coming to America as indentured servants. A LOT of people were owned by another for at least their initial period in the colonies.

http://www.teachervision.fen.com/slavery-us/resource/3848.html

[MBB1984]

I would say she lives with a car, but has no ownership, obligations, liabilities or responsibilities pertaining to the vehicle.

[FreedomPoster]

The defense they throw up when faced with that history is “but what about the Southern Strategy!?”

What about it? It wasn’t and isn’t racist, unlike Dem policies through today.

[PapaBear3625]

And don’t believe for a second that mean white Europeans or American Colonists went deep into the interior of Sub-Saharan Africa to capture poor, unsuspecting, peaceful tribesmen (ala “Roots”). Some good reading on this topic would be “Slavery, Terrorism & Islam” by Dr. Peter Hammond,because Islamic slavers figure prominently into the picture, though politically correct scholarship likes to hide ANY negative reflections on either African or Muslim involvement in slavery.

In the early days of the slave trade, the interests of the Arabs and the New World markets complemented each other. The Arab markets preferred female slaves. The New World slave owners, particularly in the Caribbean, preferred males to work the plantations.

[TWfromTEXAS]

Then you are turning a blind eye to the truth. Have at it.

[Hotmetal]

This link has narratives and interviews of ex slaves form Mississippi,very interesting what some of these people had to tell.
http://www.accessgenealogy.com/african/mississippi/mississippi_slave_narratives.htm

[MBB1984]

What is your reasoning? Under the law, except in rare circumstances, an individual that does not own specific property has no responsibilities or liabilities concerning that property even if it benefits them. In your example, do your believe your niece has responsibilities or liabilities over the automobile?

[Ditter]

The last quote in your post is something I have always wondered about.

ARe there any black Americans who are happy that their ancestors were removed from the hell hole that is Africa and brought to this country? I guess the answer to my question is YES there is at least one!

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

The point is how widespread slavery was, how deeply engrained in the economy and how widespread the benefit was. To take the car analogy, everyone in the family derives the benefit of car ownership and has a stake in maintaining that ownership, even if the car is only registered to one member of the household.

[MBB1984]

I see that point, and it makes sense to a degree. However, the same points could be made to the situation after slavery when most of the slaves became sharecroppers. It would seem to me the “widespread benefit” was really only to the large landowners and their families who benefited from cheap labor before and after slavery.

[TWfromTEXAS]

I will try one more time, you may then believe as you will.

There are 20 houses on my block. The families have one husband, his wife, and on average 3 children. On average one child is old enough to drive. The families have a car for the husband, one for the wife, one for the child who can drive, and some have a RV or truck. All total there are 75 vehicles.

Because of the laws here, every home belongs only to the husband and so does every vehicle.

Using your logic, only 20% of the local population has a home or a car. This is in fact true. It is also a fine example of “How to lie with Statistics”. This type article comes out all the time, clearly trying to say slavery was far less widespread than it was. If it makes you happy to ignore this info, fine.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

It would seem to me the “widespread benefit” was really only to the large landowners and their families who benefited from cheap labor before and after slavery.

Well, sure. The people who most directly benefited from cheap black labor after the war were mainly the same people who benefited from slave labor before the war. But I'd argue that it's not just the planters, but the middle class who owned a slave or two as household help and continued to employ a housekeeper and a man to work around the property. But in an agricultural society, which the south was until fairly recently, the secondary benefits extend throughout the society--the bankers, the merchants, the professionals and so on--the people who take the money that the planters spend.

Bringing it back to the Civil War, though, lets say that a landowner has 20 slaves and five sons. All of those sons have a huge stake in maintaining slavery--it's fundamental to the family wealth and those slaves are probably worth more than the land they work. Are any of them on the books as slave owners? No. But it would be deceptive to say that because they're not slave owners their presence in the confederate army shows that slavery had nothing to do with their reasons to fight.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

But nobody wants to be a slave...He would not accept such a deal.

A week or so ago I was on a thread here where someone said he'd rather be a slave on Thomas Jefferson's plantation than a West Virginia coal miner.

[kalee]

ping