Posted on 05/01/2003 6:24:18 AM PDT by 7thson
It was generally supposed that slavery in the State of Maryland existed in its mildest form, and that it was totally divested of those harsh and terrible peculiarities which characterized the slave system in the Southern and South Western States of the American Union. The ground of this opinion was the contiguity of the free States, and the influence of their moral, religious, and humane sentiments. Public opinion was, indeed, a measurable restraint upon the cruelty and barbarity of masters, overseers, and slave-drivers, whenever and wherever it could reach them; but there were certain secluded and out of the way places, even in the State of Maryland, fifty years ago, seldom visited by a single ray of healthy public sentiment, where slavery, rapt in its own congenial darkness, could and did develop all its malign and shocking characteristics, where it could be indecent without shame, cruel without shuddering, and murderous without apprehension or fear of exposure, or punishment. Just such a secluded, dark, and out of the way place, was the home plantation of Colonel Edward Lloyd, in Talbot county, eastern shore of Maryland. It was far away from all the great thoroughfares of travel and commerce, and proximate to no town or village. There was neither school-house nor town-house in its neighborhood. The school-house was unnecessary, for there were no children to go to school. The children and grand-children of Col. Lloyd were taught in the house by a private tutor (a Mr. Page from Greenfield, Massachusetts, a tall, gaunt, sapling of a man, remarkably dignified, thoughtful, and reticent, and who did not speak a dozen words to a slave in a whole year). The overseer's children went off somewhere in the State to school, and therefore could bring no foreign or dangerous influence from abroad to embarrass the natural operation of the slave system of the place. Not even the commonest mechanics, from whom there might have been an occasional outburst of honest and telling indignation at cruelty and wrong on other plantations, were white men here. Its whole public was made up of and divided into three classes, slaveholders, slaves, and overseers. Its blacksmiths, wheelwrights, shoemakers, weavers, and coopers, were slaves. Not even commerce, selfish and indifferent to moral considerations as it usually is, was permitted within its secluded precincts. Whether with a view of guarding against the escape of its secrets, I know not, but it is a fact, that every leaf and grain of the products of this plantation and those of the neighboring farms, belonging to Col. Lloyd, were transported to Baltimore in his own vessels, every man and boy on board of which, except the captain, were owned by him as his property. In return, everything brought to the plantation came through the same channel. To make this isolation more apparent it may be stated that the adjoining estates to Col. Lloyd's were owned and occupied by friends of his, who were as deeply interested as himself in maintaining the slave system in all its rigor. These were the Tilgmans, the Goldboroughs, the Lockermans, the Pacas, the Skinners, Gibsoas, and others of lesser affluence and standing.
(Excerpt) Read more at odur.let.rug.nl ...
I started this thread because I did not want to hijack the thread discussing the Declaration of Independence. I want to continue the discussion I was having with the above individuals, especially warchild9.
I hope you take the time to read the above excerpt and the rest of the chapter. Going back to my original question, do you – warchild9 – wish that the south would have won the war?
The assertion has been made that the south and slavery were being crushed under the economics of slavery. However, let us say that the south did win. Imagine southern forces, vice battling in Maryland and Pennsylvania, decided to march up the coast of the eastern seaboard and took over the ports of New York and Baltimore. Imagine a Sherman like thrust going through Pennsylvania and New York, laying waste to the land and the populace. Imagine by 1863, the south storms and captures Washington, DC. The north sues for peace and instead of northern victory in 1865, there is a southern victory. Now, after this has occurred, do you suppose that the south will give the northern states back to the north or occupy these states under their form of reconstruction as the north did the south? I would say the south would have occupied these states and would have imported and enforced slavery into these states. The question then stands – to warchild9 – that had the south won the Civil War and implemented slavery across the nation, do you see that as a good thing?
After reading parts of Frederick Douglas’s life as a slave, after reading Richard Wright’s Black Boy and The Big Sea by Langston Hughes, evidence is given that blacks were horribly mistreated, not unlike how the Iraqis have been treated for decades under Saddam. Do you think that all of this was made up?
And now, two points I want to make. One – individuals on FR and others I have heard from and read their columns by, have stated that blacks need to get over the fact that they were slaves and that Jim Crow laws existed, and so on. That it is time for blacks to move on. Well, is the same not true for southerners who are still fighting a war completed and decided over a century ago? Or do we in the south become like the Bonsians and the Serbs, continually fighting a war over issues that began centuries ago? Is it not time for us whites to move on from the Civil War? The second point is, the readings I have mentioned above, do people on FR believe this happened? I have heard and read reports that the slaves were not treated that bad as a whole. It seems that the Narrative by Frederick Douglas puts a lie to that assertion. Or is he telling a lie? I do not believe Douglas, Wright, and Hughes lied when they write and relate their stories of slavery, integration, and racial bigotry and hatred.
Now, I will sit back and await the flaming.
This question that I asked in the beginning goes for everything. Yes, all of this existed. And Jews were systematically targeted for extinction. And the Romans kept slaves. As did the Egyptians, and so on and so on. Do we continue fighting these wars and dredging up the past for these injuries done against our humanity. Or do we acknowledge that this did exist and then carry on to build a better future?
I have read the Douglass' autobiography and a number of other slave narratives, as well as the Freedman's Bureau interviews of 1865 and the WPA interviews of former slaves taken in the 1930's. The antebellum narratives, written by escaped slaves, give a much harsher description of the condition of slaves than that described by the elderly former slaves of the 1930's.
There is a good explanation for this. The escaped slaves were highly motivated by the abuse that they saw and experienced to make a drastic escape. However only about 5,000 out of 4 million slaves actually escaped on the "Underground Railroad." So it is hard to conclude that the vivid descriptions of the narratives were an accurate sample.
The former slaves of the 1930's give a much more benign description of slavery. Almost all of them were children at the time of the Civil War and so did not experience the harsh conditions that adults did. The Freedman's Bureau interviews of slaves made immediately after the Civil War are probably more accurate.
It is not appropriate to compare the conditions in which the slaves lived to the conditions in which immigrants lived. For one thing, the immigrants came voluntarily to this country and conditions in their native land was much worse. Secondly, any immigrant who did not like living in a tenement or working in a sweat shop was free to go elsewhere, to go out west, etc. without being hunted down with dogs.
If the south was left alone. How long would slavery continue to exist? Would it have collapsed on its own? Look at Russia - how long did that slave state exist? Until Reagan upped the ante and forced them to spend dollar to dollar with us, it lasted for over seventy years. And the Soviets attempted numerous times to enforce their system on other nations as the south was attempting to enforce slavery onto new states. Look at Cuba. Look at Iraq. Look at China. Slave states will exist forever unless some nation decides enough is enough, just like Reagan did and like GW did.
As for continuing to fight the Civil War, I do not mean with guns and battles. I mean with arguments. The south lost - it is time to get over that fact. Is the United States like it was before the Constitution? Hell no, and no other nation is like it was during periods of upheavels. Do the British long for the days before Cromwell? Do the Germans long for the days of their Austiran heyday? Does France long for the days before their revolution? Just like people, nations evolve and move on. It is time to come to the realization that the United States will never, ever return to the Constituion and government before the Civil War. Hell, it will never return to the form of government before the 16th, 17, 18, and 19th amendments. It will never return to what it was like in the fifites. Time to deal with the here and now, not a past that cannot be changed or brought back.
As for people moving to the south and saying they have it better up north, blah, blah, blah. Well, that happens everywhere. I remember when I lived in California for a couple years. I said the same things, how back east it was done this way and so on. I was told many times to move back east, and eventually I did. Life goes on.
Because the weather in the north is so cold and the weather in the south is so warm. Sorry! Still feels like winter up here!
I just happen to live in the People's Republic of Taxachusetts (also known as Marxachusetts), where the state legislature (Massachusetts is called a "commonwealth" from the old socialistic days, pilgrim!) just voted NOT to raise the state's personal income tax to 5.95%. The following excerpt is from MassNews.com:
A year after leading the charge to raise taxes by $1.2 billion, the House voted 119-37 Wednesday night to reject a budget amendment that would have raised the income tax rate from 5.3 to 5.95 percent. Earlier in the day, the House voted 126-31 to kill an attempt to borrow $300 million as a way of minimizing budget cuts. Supporters of the amendments said the money would minimize cuts in local services and programs that serve the poor and vulnerable. Opponents said voters don't want their taxes raised and argued borrowing would make the state's fiscal problems even worse. House budget chief John Rogers spent most of the day behind closed doors...
BEHIND CLOSED DOORS - where they can hide a tax increase in OTHER legislation and then, when they are caught with their pants down (easy for many modern politicos), utter with mock sincerity, NOW HOW DID THAT GET IN THERE?
My guess is that they had better stick to their word since 42% of the popular vote in the most recent election supported a referendum question to abolish the personal income tax in Marxachusetts.
A word of advance warning to politicians in the decaying cities and states of the North: RESPECT THE WISHES OF THE VOTERS ONCE AND FOR ALL. We expect the states to live within their budgets just as we have to. We expect the states to GET OUT of our lives and either to start managing social programs FAR more responsibly or to relinquish responsibility for such programs to NON-GOVERNMENTAL agencies. But hey, we are challenging the entrenched SOCIALIST MINDSET of so many northern states, especially in the East.
People can try to push the clock's hands back but you can't. We can't make whole or pay those that were slaves for being slaves. We also cannot make the South what it was before the Civil War. It's just not possible. But some people don't seem able to understand that.
Amen!
Refusal to acknowledge the importance of history, culture, and economics is an ignorant man's debate. The "holier than thou" argument falls apart easily - especially when one refuses to acknowledge actual accounts from men of that period.
I may be obsessing, though I think not. In light of the freedom of Iraq, where the majority of the populace cheered their librators and in reading about Frederick Douglas, I wondered why some argue that it was a bad thing for what the north did. It seems that leading up to the Civil War, many compromises were attempted and failed, with the finger pointing at southern leaders of the time being too stubbron to change.
It is not just rude yankees. Not all southerners are taught manners. Is it politeness in the south to call a black man the n word? During my days of youth when I had long hair, I was called many vile names by southerners. During my career in the Navy, I met many rude people, some - gasp - from the south. To paraphrase - there are rude people everywhere, they just have different accents.
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