Hunley Hoopla Ignores the other side of the story

The State (Columbia, SC) ^ | 11 April 2004 | John Monk

[Non-Sequitur]

Bump

[Non-Sequitur]

I see they conveniently left out the fact that many blacks in South Carolina were also slaveholders.

How many?

[Non-Sequitur]

Lincoln's father-in-law sold his slaves more than two years after the end of the war. He didn't free them... he sold them.

Lincoln's father-in-law, Robert S. Todd, died in 1849. So how did he accomplish this miraculous act?

But, I think we could use a dose of truth in the history that we pass on to our young. How can we learn from history if it's just a friggin mystery???

How can we learn from history if you are making it up as you go along?

[Dixie Pirate]

I apologize for such a blatant mistake and appreciate your correction. It was 1851 when Lincoln profited from the sale of Mr. Todd's slaves (which is documented in the Fayette County, Kentucky Court Papers). Here's a bit more on the subject:

The Confederate Constitution prohibited African Slave Trade (Article 9, Section 1), something the U.S. Constitution did not do before the end of the War. It is a well documented fact that the Union Generals Grant, McCllellan, and Sherman were far more "pro-slavery" than Confederate Generals R.E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson.

In his inaugural speech of March 4, 1861, U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln, stated that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery. I believe that I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so" Furthermore, Union General, Ulysses S. Grant, said that if he "thought that this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission, and offer my sword to the other side". A war over slavery? Not hardly! The Confederate States of America even offered to free all southern slaves in return for independence. Lincoln refused the offer.

In March of 1865 Confederate President Jefferson Davis notified England and France that the South would abolish slavery in exchange for support. The war ended before he received an answer.

The 1860 United States census reported that around 10,000 free blacks owned some 60,000 black slaves.

7% of whites owned slaves, 2% of blacks in the South owned slaves. It is irrational to think that the other 93% of whites were shedding their blood so these few could keep their slaves.

[stainlessbanner]

BET recently did a feature on one.

Interesting. I would like to see the history channel do a special.

[stand watie]

sorry, but you KNOW that what you say is a LIE. nothing more,nothing less, scalawag.

there were FEW slaveowners in the southland in 1860. about the same percentage as the percentage of slaveowners in the north.

AND slavery was DYING due to agricultral improvements. absent TWBTS, the "peculiar institution" would have died an UN-lamented natural death within 10 years and likely within 5 years.

that is the TRUTH and you KNOW it.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

oddly enough 14guage shotguns were COMMON at the time. 14guages could be made LIGHTER than a 10 or 12 AND they used less shot/powder too.

this was important in a poor agricultural society, where cash was SCARCE!

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

LOL!

free dixie NOW,sw

[WhiskeyPapa]

there were FEW slaveowners in the southland in 1860. about the same percentage as the percentage of slaveowners in the north.

According to the US Census of 1860, there were only 64 slaves in all of the "Free" States and Territories in that year: 29 in Utah Territory, 15 in Nebraska Territory, 2 in Kansas Territory, and 18 in New Jersey. New Jersey had abolished slavery and the New Jersey slaves had the right to freedom but were too old or sick or otherwise unemployable to voluntarily abandon the security of their status. Of course, there were 432,586 slaves in the slave-owning "Southern" states and territories that remained loyal to the Union, including Delaware, District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri and the New Mexico Territory.

Your statement is nonsense.

Walt

[stand watie]

i'm talking about the TENS of THOUSANDS of slaves owned by yankee companies & individuals, which were located both in the north & in the south.

in point of fact, the MONY, of New York City,Corporation recently made reparations payments to the descendants of the company's MANY hundreds of slaves.

another point. in many northern states, they didn't call them slaves. they called them servants, bound to their master for 99 YEARS! NE was just one of those HYPOCRYTICAL states.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

don't you just HATE it, when i show you to be IGNORANT & a LIAR, as well as a traitor to your state & the southland????

btw, the 1860 census was so badly flawed that the DAR won't let you use data from that to become a member of the DAR!

that's why you have to go check the TAX RECORDS for each county to learn who REALLY owned slaves. in a LARGE percentage of cases, the OWNER & the USER were different people.

free dixie,sw

[Gianni]

The Confederate States of America even offered to free all southern slaves in return for independence. Lincoln refused the offer.

Haven't seen this before.

[Smokin' Joe]

My kinfolk felt the same way. The more urbane apparently fell for it, at least to some degree. The most militarily organized were thus negated as an opposing force, without a shot fired. Bridges were burned and not replaced for the duration, but this only slowed the advance.

Meanwhile, in MO, a relative lost his prosperous lumber business, all the stud horses and 600 brood mares as the yankees torched what they didn't take and sent the family out on a freight wagon with a plug mule. All because he would not swear an oath to the Union. (May have sworn a few at the Union after that.) Where are the reparations for that? Never happen, an act of war.

[PeaRidge]

"Unfortunatey for your interpretation, the rebel armies largely melted away through desertion."

Which of course allowed the following to happen.

"It required a naval fleet and 15,000 troops to advance against a weak fort, manned by less than 100 men, at Fort Henry;     

35,000 with naval cooperation, to overcome 12,000 at Fort Donelson; 

60,000 to secure victory over 40,000 at Shiloh;

120,000 to enforce the retreat of 65,000 after a month's fighting and maneuvering at Corinth;

100,000 were repelled by 60,000 in the first campaign against Richmond;

70,000 with a powerful naval force, to inspire the campaign which lasted nine months against 40,000 at Vicksburg;        

90,000 to barely withstand the assault of 60,000 at Gettysburg.

115,000 sustaining a frightful repulse from 60,000 at Fredericksburg;

100,000 attacked and defeated by 50,000 at Chancellorsville; 

85,000 held in check  for two days by 40,000 at Antietam; 

70,000 defeated at Chattanooga, and beleagured by 40,000 at Chattanooga to Atlanta;

and finally 120,000 to overcome 60,000 with exhaustion after a struggle of a year in Virginia."

Not a very good record for the Union Army.

[Salamander]

"Where are the reparations for that? Never happen, an act of war."

We're in the wrong political party for that.
We're just supposed to "get over it".
After all, it's "all in the past", isn't it?....;)

[PeaRidge]

Why not just go ahead and quote the Governor of the first state to secede, and get it right from the one man that was leading the entire event of secession, Governor Pickens:

"For seventy-three years this State has been connected by a Federal compact with co-states under a bond of Union, for great national objects common to all.

"In recent years there has been a powerful party organized upon principles of ambition and fanaticism, whose undisguised purpose is to divest the Federal Government from external, and turn its power upon the internal interests and domestic institutions of these States.

"They have thus combined a party exclusively in the Northern States, whose avowed objects, not only endanger the peace, but the very existence of near one-half the States of this Confederacy.

"And in the recent election for President and Vice-President of these States, they have carried the election upon principles that make it no longer safe for us to rely upon the powers of the Federal Government or the guarantees of the Federal compact.

"This is the great overt act of the people of in the Northern States at the ballot box, in the exercise of their sovereign power at the polls, from which there is no higher appeal recognized under our system of government in its ordinary and habitual operations.

"They thus propose to inaugurate a Chief Magistrate at the head of the Army and Navy with vast powers, not to preside over the common interests and destinies of all the States alike, but upon issues of malignant hostility and uncompromising war to be urged upon the rights, the interests and the peace of half the States of this Union."

The people of the State of South Carolina seceded for self-defense.

[Rebeleye]

One of the blacks in SC who owned slaves was William Ellison of Sumter County. He purchased a former governor's home and was well received by the planter society. During the War between the States he made wagon wheels for the Confederacy.

[nolu chan]

[Walt] You've seen the record and you know that slave ownership devolved on 50% of whites in MS, LA and SC, and on @ 1/3 of whites in the other so-called seceded states.

I have not only seen those statistics, I have article from which they originate.

The actual number of 347,255 is magically inflated to 2,250,000.

SOURCE: Southern Pamphlets on Secession, November 1860 - April 1861, edited by Jon L. Wakelyn, University of North Carolina Press, 1996, ISBN: 0-8078-2278-7, pp. 78-87.

[78]

JAMES D. B. DE BOW

The Interest in Slavery of the Southern Non-Slaveholder

(Charleston: Evans & Cogswell, 1860)

James D. B. De Bow (1820-67) came from a poor Charleston family, attended Cokesbury Institute in South Carolina, studied at the College of Charleston on a scholarship, graduated number one in his class in 1843, and then read law. A poor speaker, he soon realized that the law was not for him and instead began to write for The Southern Quarterly Review, an intellectual and political periodical in Charleston. In 1845 De Bow moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he founded the business magazine De Bow's Review, became a professor of political economy at the University of New Orleans, gained fame as head of the Louisiana Bureau of Statistics, and served as superintendent of the 1850 U.S. Census. Ardent about defending the South, he published many important political and economic articles on the sectional crisis. During the presidential election in 1860 he traveled in the Gulf states and the Southeast to meet with secession leaders and to give speeches in support of secession. His most famous speech, which became the pamphlet printed below, was a reply to Hinton R. Helper's Impending Crisis of the South (New York: Burdick Brothers, 1857), in which he refuted Helper's views on the decline of the Southern economy and the damage that the slave culture did to poor whites. De Bow blamed the problems of Southern agriculture on a conspiracy of Northern manufacturers and shippers, as he attempted to unite all Southerners in defense of slavery and secession. During the Civil War he held posts in the Confederate Treasury Department and as a Confederate cotton agent. For information about his life see Otis Clark Skipper, J. D. B. De Bow: Magazinist of the Old South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1958); interested readers should peruse the pages of De Bow's Review (1846-67).

When in charge of the national census office, several years since, I found that it had been stated by an abolition Senator from his seat, that the

1. This pamphlet originated as a speech on December 5, 1860, in Nashville, Tennessee. It created such a stir that Robert Gourdin of the South Carolina 1860 Association asked De Bow if he could reprint it as pamphlet number five of his se­cession pamphlets. De Bow also reprinted the speech in De Bow's Review 30 (Janu­ary 1861): 67-76. For a study of the 1860 Association see Charles Edward Cauthen, South Carolina Goes to War, 1860-1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1950).

[79]

number of slaveholders in the South did not exceed 150,000. Convinced that it was a gross misrepresentation of the facts, I caused a careful exami­nation of the returns to be made, which fixed the actual number at 347,255, and communicated the information, by note, to Senator Cass, who read it in the Senate. I first called attention to the fact that the number embraced slaveholding families, and that to arrive at the actual number of persons, which the census showed to a family. When this was done, the number swelled to about 2,000,000.

Since these results were made public, I have had reason to think, that the separation of the schedules of the slave and the free, was calculated to lead to omissions of the single properties, and that on this account it would be safe to put the number of families at 375,000, and the number of actual slaveholders at about two million and a quarter.

Assuming the published returns, however, to be correct, it will ap­pear that one-half of the population of South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana, excluding the cities, are slaveholders, and that one-third of the population of the entire South are similarly circumstanced.

[nolu chan]

According to Allen C. Guelzo, "Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation," p. 23, "... from 1850 until 1862, Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, were embroiled in litigation in Kentucky over the settlement of the estate of Mary's father, litigation that net­ted the Lincolns a share in the proceeds of selling the Todd family slaves."

[Non-Sequitur]

And?