Posted on 11/15/2004 12:05:16 PM PST by nosofar
African slavery is so much the outstanding feature of the South, in the unthinking view of it, that people often forget there had been slaves in all the old colonies. Slaves were auctioned openly in the Market House of Philadelphia; in the shadow of Congregational churches in Rhode Island; in Boston taverns and warehouses; and weekly, sometimes daily, in Merchant's Coffee House of New York. Such Northern heroes of the American Revolution as John Hancock and Benjamin Franklin bought, sold, and owned black people. The family of Abraham Lincoln himself, when it lived in Pennsylvania in colonial times, owned slaves.[1]
When the minutemen marched off to face the redcoats at Lexington in 1775, the wives, boys and old men they left behind in Framingham took up axes, clubs, and pitchforks and barred themselves in their homes because of a widespread, and widely credited, rumor that the local slaves planned to rise up and massacre the white inhabitants while the militia was away.[2]
African bondage in the colonies north of the Mason-Dixon Line has left a legacy in the economics of modern America and in the racial attitudes of the U.S. working class. Yet comparatively little is written about the 200-year history of Northern slavery. Robert Steinfeld's deservedly praised "The Invention of Free Labor" (1991) states, "By 1804 slavery had been abolished throughout New England," ignoring the 1800 census, which shows 1,488 slaves in New England. Recent archaeological discoveries of slave quarters or cemeteries in Philadelphia and New York City sometimes are written up in newspaper headlines as though they were exhibits of evidence in a case not yet settled (cf. “African Burial Ground Proves Northern Slavery,” The City Sun, Feb. 24, 1993).
(Excerpt) Read more at slavenorth.com ...
Garbage. If the leadership produced out of each region is any indicator of their respective populations, the south wins hands down. Our most intelligent president, Jefferson, is a classic example. Like him or hate him, Calhoun is also consistently recognized by historians as the most intelligent of the famous senate "triumpherate" of Calhoun-Clay-Webster. Read the general speeches in Congress and you will find southerners quoting Shakespeare from memory and explaining complex legal concepts as opposed to venom-spewers like Sumner and Stevens who employed a far inferior form of rhetoric, namely inflamatory ranting. Heck, look at who the north supported in the 1860 presidential race when the south went to the extremely well educated and intelligent incumbent Vice President. Who'd they pick? An uneducated country bumpkin from Illinois with a gift for clintonian political skills and a disposition toward Artemus Ward rather than Aristotle.
It almost did, fake-it. Read the letters between Palmerston and Russell shortly after 2nd manassas. They were openly preparing for diplomatic intervention in the war with what Russell called "a view toward recognition" of the southern nation.
Your usual economic and historical ignorance is showing again, fake-it. Outside of a few whiggish hotbeds like Kentucky, southern opposition to the tariff was consistent and pronounced on every single major protection vote from 1820 to 1861. That includes the tariff bills of 1820, 1824, 1828, 1832, 1833, 1842, 1846, 1857, and 1861.
Those tariffs affected the farmers of the West and North just as negatively as those of the South
Actually, no they didn't. They affected everybody negatively to be sure except for the northern industrialists. But northern agricultural commodities were not exported as much as southern ones were, thus northerners did not bear the double tariff burden of having to sell at the world price and face retaliation from abroad.
but the North had the initiative to build industries under their protection which, except for Virginia, was never done.
As usual you are simply wrong. The south lagged in manufacturing production and consciously so, but not in other economic capacities. Nobel laureate Robert Fogel conducted an extensive examination of the antebellum southern economy. The south's railroad mileage per capita was only 8% less than the north's, for example, and exceeded the per capita railroad mileage of Britain, France, and Germany combined in 1860. The south's per capita income in 1860 was higher than every single country in Europe except for Britain. It exceeded France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Italy, Sweden - you name it. In terms of products the south produced 75% of the entire nation's exports in 1860.
Incorrect again. They hurt the agricultural sectors of the economies in those states, though at a rate somewhat less than the south simply because they did not contribute as great of a percentage of the production of U.S. exports. There were many in Illinois who strongly favored protection and campaigned for Lincoln there on it.
Where have you seen me claim that SOME of the Ruling Class of the South was not well educated? Of course, most went to the North to obtain that education since that class cared little about developing educational institutions. Jefferson was an exception. I never said they were ALL ignorant.
Apparently you don't believe the facts and figures easily obtained from the Census regarding such matters.
Lincoln's lack of education does not change the fact that he was one of the most brilliant politicians who ever lived and whose ability to strike at the heart of things with his rhetoric is unparallelled.
It must suck to hate the very things your nation was founded upon and flail about in a vain attempt to defend a tyranny of extraordinary evil like the Slaverocracy.
Slavery was the only issue capable of driving secession. It is a delusion to claim otherwise and totally ignores the views of those who actually led the rebellion. You should pay more attention to them than modern-day apologists. Rhett for example would be most instructive.
Governments develop contingence plans for any eventuality.
Short of a clear Cornfederate victory there was NO chance that England was going to recognize the South. Outside delusional minds.
Though I realize you prefer to argue with yourself I must point out that I was correct the South controlled the Congress for most of the early 1800s. Opposition to the tariffs was not sufficient to defeat them.
What silliness will you spout next? Cotton faced no competition (which was why the fools believed England MUST support the South) while the commodities of the North certainly faced not just competition but outright exclusion in some countries. Tariffs are placed on IMPORTS at any rate so your bilge is utterly irrelevent.
Per capita evaluations of the South's industrial prowess of course are beside the point particularly when comparing regions of lower population to regions of higher population. Northern industrial power overwhelmed the South as even that distinguished political economist, Rhett Butler, explained to the Boys in GWTW when predicting that Southern defeat was inevitable.
You keep confusing imports with exports. U.S. Tariffs had no effect on Illinois exports.
Many people supported tariffs even though it would hurt them personally because they believed them good for the nation as a whole.
At the Founding representatives from all regions supported a tariff Madison and Jefferson as well as Hamilton.
But I did not mean to say that a tariff hurt those Northern states as much as Southern states. I meant to say that they effected farmers in the same way North or South. Thanks for the correction.
"Chandler was correct in his understanding that nothing would remove the cancer of slavery but bloodshed"
He meant the bloodshed of Southern American citizens, which is a direct threat. If you acknowledge his correctness, then you have to accept what he said was a threat.
Upon secession, slavery no longer existed in the Union, except in a few border states.
So, the 'cancer' had been removed, for the abolitionists, there was no need to spill Southern blood.
Then that begs the question of why Lincoln, i.e. the Republican Party, started the War.
With slavery gone, there was only one reason for war....stopping the free South from trading directly with Europe, and freeing the Mississippi to international trade.
Lincoln did not "start" the war but did act to preserve the Union and the Constitution from insurrectionists just as the document empowered him to do.
Presidents take an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and Lincoln fulfilled that oath. In so doing he became a figure of towering stature and took his place among the Immortals mankind will always admire for his courage.
So why didn't three of the slave states rebel?
One such place was the Old Slave House in Equality, IL.
I visited it on a school field trip back in the 1970's.
From our remove slavery and indenture look pretty much the same, but they're not!
So, if they have a "slave house" anywhere in Illinois it has to be PRE-Indiana Territory. That would put it back before very many people lived there. It might also refer to an ever earlier civilization in that area, and not to the present American civilization.
For example, the biggest Indian tribe (in terms of territory) in Oklahoma. the Chickasaw (headquartered in Tishamingo) have a tradition that they came from the far West.
We don't know how far West it was, but they had horses, and times got hard, so that places this story sometime after 1515 or thereabouts when Indians began acquiring Spanish horses. I'll guess the band with this foundation story lived somewhere along the Rio Grande.
Anyway, times were tough so they headed East. They cut a lead horse loose and followed the horse. This was in conformance with the instructions from God given to the tribe's shaman to "cut the horse loose and go to where he stops".
So they did so and ended up over in Mississippi. Later on they moved to Oklahoma
About that time (1850s) a band of folks in the Apostolic Charismatic Church of the First Born in Indiana decided to go West to Oklahoma.
Times were hard so the minister/shaman mixed the appropriate herbs, got in the sweat lodge, and had a vision or two. He came out and told the members of the church to "cut the horse loose and follow him until he stopped".
Best I can tell that particular horse kept going until he got to what we now call Zion National Park in Utah.
I'm pretty sure these stories are not just coincidental since one of the COTFB settlements at Altus was coterminus with a Chickasaw settlement, and COTFB folks are scattered all over Oklahoma (as are Chickasaw).
It looks like the same story, except that the COTFB band that went to Zion also had a couple of little girls who grew up to be faith-healers (a story that coincides with an Iriquois story) and had the story of the "three brothers" (which coincides with the foundation story of the true religion of the Delaware and the Mohican).
This leads me to believe that COTFB affiliation by American Indians has resulted in the development of a COTFB story board, and not the other way around.
Which leads me to my point ~ the "slave house" story could relate to a place where slaves were kept by the French or Spanish, long before that part of the world had any English or American settlers, or possibly even to the times the Indians still had villages and towns in the area ~ which would be right up through the mid 1500s. That's when times got hard and the locals moved East (see Cherokee moving to the Carolinas).
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If so, this particular house would be one of the oldest European constructed buildings in the Americas, or a holdover from pre-Columbian times ~ a true architectural and archaeological wonder!
What is the evidence that Benjamin Franklin ever bought or owned a slave?
Wrong! The census of 1830 showed 747 slaves in Illinois. (Illinois was admitted into the Union in 1818.)
John Crenshaw's Hickory Hill Plantation and salt-mine was opened in 1842 and operated for six years until the owner was forced to close it due to being seriously injured by a slave with an axe. It was run entirely by black slave labor.
BTW,this is the same time that Old Honest Abe was a member of Congress. He even spent a night or two at the Plantation as late as 1840. He knew Mr. Crenshaw well and one of his Sangamon County law firm partners married one of John Hart Crenshaw's daughters. There can be little doubt that Mr. Lincoln knew all about Illinois slavery.
This is no "slave house story." I've visited the place and seen the chains in the third-floor slave quarters.
The Hickory Hill historical site closed in 1996 due to the ill health of the owner. Negotiations are underway with the State of Illinois to purchase the site as an historic property. It's quite well documented.
No, the house is early 19th Century. Apparently the story is that, while it was illegal to own slaves in Illinois, it was legal to lease them, by provision in the state constitution, specifically to work in the salt mines of Saline County, and the owner of the house, a fellow named Crenshaw, indeed owned a salt mine. Rather than spend the money to lease slaves, though, he took to capturing runaways or kidnapping freed blacks, working them in his mine for a while, then selling them south--a much more lucrative method of labor management. The upper floor of the house consists of very small cells where he'd lock them up. There are some real horror stories about the place and it's allegedly very haunted.
BTW, does the census identify people as "slaves" or "other than white"?
You do know American Indians who were independent of tribes as well as Gypsies (Roma), Jews and Sa'ami were so identified.
It's not surprising to find a Souv'rn sympathizer taking a criminal act in the North and using it to smear Abe Lincoln.
BTW, Abe Lincoln's mother and older sister are buried near the site of his father's Indiana settlement. The burial actually took place on our family's property, not Tom's. Haven't figured it out all the reasons ~ maybe a bad survey, maybe a relative, maybe the preacher ~ could be any number of reasons, but I try to tag all the folks who bad-mouth Father Abraham "OUT"!!!
...neither slavery nor involuntary servitude should thereafter be introduced in the State except for the punishment of crimes; and that no male person or the age of twenty-one years, or female of the age of eighteen years, should be held to serve any person as a servant under any indenture thereafter made. It also rendered invalid any indenture thereafter made of any negro or mulatto where the term of service exceeded one year...
And Article 6, Section the Third with states:
Each and every person who has been bound to service by contract or indenture in virtue of the laws of Illinois territory heretofore existing, and in Conformity to the provisions of the same, without fraud or collusion, shall be held to a specific performance of their contracts or indentures; and such negroes and mulattoes as have registered in conformity with the aforesaid laws shall serve out the time appointed by said laws: Provided, however, that the children hereafter born of such persons, negroes and mulattoes, shall become free, the males at the age of twenty-one years; the females at the age of eighteen years.
This, however, was either ignored or overridden by the so-called "Black Laws" passed in 1819, one year after admission to the Union.
Evidence of the ignoring of the Constitution requirement is found in a letter from the then-Governor of Illinois Ninian Edwards. written to Col. A. G. S. Wright, a resident of Galena, Illinois dated Aug. 19, 1825, which states:
"I have just received your letter of the 4th-inst., and lose not a moment in replying to it.
"Whatever may have been the conceptions you had formed from my description, at Vandalia last winter, of the servants I have since sold you, I well know there was no intention on my part of deceiving you or any one else, and I should suppose your finding Charles so much better than you expected, sufficient to free me from any such suspicion, since, as he was capable of being the most valuable, if I had intended to deceive, I must have acted most strangely in representing him so much worse, and the others so, much better than they respectively deserved. The truth is, that I said nothing then, which I did not at that time, and which I do not now, believe to be true"...
..."I could have had no motive to deceive by any description I gave of those Servants, because I did not suppose anyone would have purchased them without seeing them and judging for himself."
And if the Governor of the state didn't particularly pay any attention to the Constitutional requirement, you can be sure that there were others and continued to be so for some time without interference by state officials, thus the recording of 747 slaves during the 1830 census.
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