Posted on 02/22/2022 7:12:38 AM PST by Kaslin
In 1776, America's Founding Fathers signed a world-changing document recognizing that all men are created equal. Yet, millions of Black Americans were not afforded freedom.
Despite passionate opposition against slavery and the gradual outlawing of this evil, the Deep South's world-supplying cotton industry and Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin ushered a systematic dependency on slave labor.
The extreme wealth derived from this one sector of the American economy justified personal greed over humanity and the intrinsic dignity of every individual. It was this course that decoupled our nation from its Constitutional mooring. Returning to our mission statement would take a painful correction at the expense of over 600,000 American lives and the destruction of the southern economy that would take generations to rebuild.
Our nation is yet again seeing the consequences of unfettered greed through American corporations aligning themselves with Communist China. They jockey for access, calculate stock values, and place personal wealth and power over our country's core foundation of freedom and equality. The 1800 empathy-free plantation owners have been replaced by 2022 woke corporatists who collaborate behind closed boardroom doors in the name of profit.
The 1794 Cotton Gin is our generation's Communist China, and today's corporations represent American Greed 101. The disconnect between these corporatists and our American values is on full display in their sprint to sponsor the 2022 Winter Olympics Games in Beijing, China.
The presence of inhumanity in China is undeniable. Uyghur, Christians, and other minority groups are punished and tortured for worshiping their faith. Millions are placed in slave labor concentration camps as child labor, organ harvesting, rape, forced abortion, and sterilization of women proceed unabated.
Yet, Atlanta-based social justice warrior CoCa-Cola opted to pay China to advertise their products and run their Olympics advertisements exclusively to a Chinese audience and exclusively in the Chinese language. Where was Coca-Cola's duty when faced with the reality of slavery, rape, torture, and death of minorities at the hands of Communist China? It appears that when granted the option of wealth, modern-day slavery is not a red line.
In 2020, several American companies pressured Congress to water down The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, bipartisan legislation banning products manufactured through forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region from being imported to the U.S.
The true heart of the American Corporatist can also be seen in the words of Billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya, a minority owner of the Golden State Warriors. He expressed what he called “a very hard, ugly truth” about China’s treatment of its Uyghur minority-Muslim population in the Xinjiang autonomous region. “Nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs," he said.
As we emerge and recalculate after two years of retrospect, we have an opportunity to evaluate institutions once trusted, revered, and respected. Should that trust continue? The enticement of Communist China has proven too powerful for America's corporate class.
As they use their CCP Olympic sponsor platform to promote their products, they promote divisiveness in their own country, cover for the human rights abuses of millions, and give legitimacy to the CCP.
In the United States of America, we stand for freedom. Our domestic companies should too, or we should not stand with them.
Always remember that the 3/5 Compromise was forced by the Yankees. They did not want the numerous Southern slaves to tilt the balance of representation to the South. Also there were many Yankee slave owners. Whoever says different is a liar.
Be careful speaking truth, because the Lincoln Lovers will come with their truncheons.
An old saying in the South:
“If we had known then what we know today, we would have picked our own damn cotton.”
Lot of truth in that sentence.
Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin ushered a systematic dependency on slave labor.
.................................................
Helping to alleviate the need for so much slave labor perhaps. The author is 180 degrees wrong on this point.
That’s what I always heard.
The cotton gin did away with using slaves to pick the seeds out of the cotton.
Lincoln let the soldiers at fort moltrie habg, no supplys, no new troops nothing, he left them to starve for 3 months. They were out of food. What kind of president dangles a half dead mouse in Front of an angry cat? Hoping the cat will take the bait, knowing he only wants a flimsy excuse to club the cat to death? Same bullshit as. Bush and the “ weapons of mass destruction”.
If you think about it, had a slave counted as a whole person for representation in the House but not letting the slave even vote or be free would have given the slave owners greater representation in the House than the states with few slaves, even if the states with few slaves had more citizens.
Laws like the Act to Prohibit the Importation of Slaves in 1807 (going into effect in 1808) would have been impossible had the slaves counted as 1 person (because the states with large slave populations would have had a larger share of representatives in the House even if they had fewer citizens -- putting much power into few hands).
Northern blacks were all exited until they found out that they couldn’t drink cotton gin.
Northerners wanted no slaves counted for purposes of representation, slaveholders wanted them all counted.
3/5 was the compromise reached as representing the generally agreed value of a slave's production compared to the labor of a free man.
"They did not want the numerous Southern slaves to tilt the balance of representation to the South."
Iirc, slave states did hold majorities in Congress in those early years, but political parties were not split North vs South, so it didn't matter.
"Also there were many Yankee slave owners."
In the 1790 census, roughly 90% of slaves were held in the South, 10% in Northern states. Every census there after the numbers in the North declined, in the South they grew dramatically.
Plantations did something that was never done before. They made agriculture scalable.
Now things are so different. Cotton gins are few and far between and visitors are not allowed (too dangerous). Plus I don't even know if they bale cotton any more (that baling machine was scary impressive). I think now the cotton picker creates "modules" as the cotton is being picked and leaves them in the field for later pick-up. I have no idea how it works any more.
And I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as a "compress" any more. Our little town had one of them as well, and my father took me to visit it once. Very little machinery (just to compress the bales); it was mostly just a warehouse.
When I started elementary school the schools actually closed for a couple weeks each fall for "cotton picking." That was before agribusiness when lots of families grew cotton, and still picked it by hand. I was too young to do any picking, but I got to ride on the cotton pick sack. I know those don't exist any more.
Well, that was quite a diversion from the high minded point of the article, but . . . at my age I often drift into the past now.
I believe the author is correct.
Cotton was not a good cash crop in the 18th century. Slaves grew rice, tobacco and indigo. Cotton was grown to some extent but really wasn’t worth it. Picking out the damn seeds was just too hard. I believe there had been discussion shortly before 1800 that slavery was an outmoded system. It wasn’t worth it. Even in the South, they felt that it wasn’t delivering a good return.
Then Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, cotton became a viable cash crop, and the importance of slavery in the South skyrocketed.
Also of note — in the 1850s people were once gain observing that slavery was not cost effective. Wage labor seemed to provide more bang for the buck, and many people thought slavery was likely to fade away in a few decades. But then we had the War. It ended slavery more quickly, but introduced additional problems.
Looks like those who push the great reset in terms of stakeholders instead of just stockholders have some selective programing when it comes to “the presence of inhumanity in China….. Uyghur, Christians, and other minority groups are punished and tortured for worshiping their faith. Millions are placed in slave labor concentration camps as child labor, organ harvesting, rape, forced abortion, and sterilization of women proceed unabated”.
Was slave labor as free as raising children is today? $125,000 per child without college.
I wonder.
Well put - mostly. However, all the easily delinted cotton would have had no market if not for the advances in the mechanical arts to drastically improve manufacture of thread and cloth.
That production enriched northern industry and sparked the ascent of the American economy - both in terms of consumption and export. And the spinoffs are incalculable.
Trivia question: when did cotton products fall out of first place as the most valuable US export? 1932. It had risen to first place sometime in the 1840s-50s.
Cotton made the US economy and provided foreign exchange - an essential element for growth of an emerging economy.
Makes a really-dry martini.
“The 1794 Cotton Gin is our generation’s Communist China, ...”
Well that was dumb.
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