Posted on 07/07/2015 3:17:08 AM PDT by dennisw
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).
The rare instances when the ownership of slaves by free Negroes is acknowledged in the history books, justification centers on the claim that black slave masters were simply individuals who purchased the freedom of a spouse or child from a white slaveholder and had been unable to legally manumit them. Although this did indeed happen at times, it is a misrepresentation of the majority of instances, one which is debunked by records of the period on blacks who owned slaves. These include individuals such as Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry, of Colleton District, South Carolina, who each owned 84 slaves in 1830. In fact, in 1830 a fourth of the free Negro slave masters in South Carolina owned 10 or more slaves; eight owning 30 or more (2).
According to federal census reports, on June 1, 1860 there were nearly 4.5 million Negroes in the United States, with fewer than four million of them living in the southern slaveholding states. Of the blacks residing in the South, 261,988 were not slaves. Of thisnumber, 10,689 lived in New Orleans. The country's leading African American historian, Duke University professor John Hope Franklin, records that in New Orleans over 3,000 free Negroes owned slaves, or 28 percent of the free Negroes in that city.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Sorry to bust your bubble.
If they didn't fight the war to end slavery, why then did they fight the war?
To preserve the Union in the face of the Southern rebellion.
I was saying the very opposite. I was saying that the same demographic groups divided back in those days, is the same demographic groups divided nowadays. The North Eastern Liberals are all supporting the latest socialistic/modern moral fads, and the Same Southern Demographics are opposing them.
Unfortunately, to them has been joined the Billionaire groups of San Fransisco and Los Angeles, and they both bask in their disdain for flyover "Jesus Land." The "god" they worship now is government, but they still all exhibit that Northeastern Puritanical witch hunting mindest for which their fanaticism was made famous.
You can feel the palpable hatred by Northerners for Southerners in most any comedian’s routine when playing to a NYC audience, for example.
Did you follow that link I posted earlier? It simply counts this as an ongoing aspect of the War between the English and the Scots-Irish.
Agreed.
See, we can agree on things. :)
To be fair, Whitney wasn’t trying to rescue slavery. In fact, if I remember correctly, he thought his invention would help end slavery because it so greatly reduced the amount of labor needed to clean seeds out of cotton.
Best laid plans and all that...
I cannot address this point intelligently because I have no intimate knowledge of the types and distribution of these tariffs. Being the lowest is not necessarily the most salient factor as regards tariffs. I think a lot of objection regarding tariffs is entirely related to whose ox is getting gored.
They may be low overall, but they might specifically target specific businesses or industries which were not previously targeted. For example, a high tariff on Dandelion wine would not have near the impact as a low tariff on imported oil.
Again, I don't know enough of the details to voice an intelligent opinion on the specifics.
Let’s assume tariffs did indeed fall disproportionately on the southern economy. Would getting out from under them justify secession and the distinct chance of war?
Well, let me consult the instruction manual.
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Since it doesn't appear to violate the rules, I would have to say "Yeah." People can leave a government even for wrong headed ideas.
Finally, let’s assume secession went over peacefully. How do you think southerners were going to pay for their new government and its armed forces?
That they may have bitten off more than they can financially chew is their own fault, and perhaps if they cannot afford their new fangled independence, they might like to try getting readmitted to the Union or something, but their bad planning does not obviate their right to do something stupid.
Would they be content permanently to have necessary military supplies be subject to interruption by blockade, or would they have introduced something with the effect if not the name of protective tariffs to encourage production of essential military supplies domestically?
I have no idea, and I'm not even certain I grasp the question sufficiently to answer it.
I think the war between the English and Scots-Irish idea is stretching things. English descended people made up the considerable majority in both sections.
Scots-Irish were concentrated in the mountainous areas of the South, and thus a surprisingly large number were Unionists.
The New England states at the time were heavily English, but the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest states were very mixed. Large percentages of people in midwest states came from the South.
Davis and Lincoln were born within 9 months and 100 miles of each other in the KY mountains. Davis went south and west, and Lincoln north and west.
To hear our white liberal elites talk we all want illegals in the US... but in fact that illegal 'servant class' only services white liberal elites.
Elites get the gold - we get the shaft. Just like slavery - slavery only serviced white liberal elites in the South.
The rest of us paid for that with reduced wages then - and massive debt now.
And for that - to this day - blacks blame most of their problems on slavery... idiots. We all paid - well, except liberal elites.
Much to be said for this perspective on things. I see no obvious flaws in it with the exception that Norther Liberal elites also benefited. Believe it or not, there was much support for the Institution of slavery in New York.
A lot of what you say seems common to both that long past age, and our own.
Probably this would have been regarded as an extraconstitutional affront to private property rights. Nowadays we don't normally think of people as "property" (Unless of course we are referring to an unborn child) but it was apparently a common place view of that time period.
BTW, Lincoln agreed fugitive slaves must be returned. He just insisted on reasonable due process to determine they actually were slaves, which seems reasonable.
Had they given him a chance, they may very well have discovered that Lincoln would have been to them far more reasonable than his rhetoric implied. The problem was they were too sensitive and his oratory was too moving.
He was a D@mned fine thinker and writer and speaker.
It was his election as such they objected to, not anything he did himself.
They are not all unreasonable, they are just starting from different initial perspectives. I too used to think Lincoln was a Hero, and that the war was fought to end slavery, but ironically it was my best friend (who is black and a History Major) that woke me up to a different way of looking at things.
He firmly believes Lincoln deliberately triggered the civil war because he was so good at reading people he knew exactly how to outmaneuver them.
The attack on Ft. Sumter served Lincoln's interests far more than it ever served the Interests of the Confederacy or South Carolina.
The Invasion is what started the Killing, and the Killing is what started a "War."
People can forgive damaged rocks, but bloodshed crosses a line.
This is like saying there are two ways to leave the English Union. By petitioning Parliament or by asserting your Independence.
The US chose the later. They chose exactly correctly. The Southerners chose the same path.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_of_1794
After 20 years, importing slaves was banned.
Hard to square that act with the Constitutional provision prohibiting such acts. I guess they were ignoring it back then too.
It was reasonably thought these measures would lead to an end of slavery without needing a war. That proved to be a false hope, but it was a reasonable approach.
Once again, blame Eli Whitney who made it profitable.
The point here is obvious to someone not brainwashed in deliberate propaganda. The point is that the Union had no concern for the lives or rights of slaves until it became good propaganda, good war tactics and good politics to have a concern for their lives and rights.
The Union tolerated their condition for four score and seven years, until a piece of it wanted to leave, then suddenly what was completely tolerable for them became an ex post facto casus belli. It gave them an after the fact justification for chasing down and beating that runaway slave.
This is what is known as "selective morality." Slavery only became objectionable to the Union when it was needed as a tool to justify the abuse they put the country through. It's apologists have been hyping it ever since.
Well that makes no sense at all.
People can forgive damaged rocks, but bloodshed crosses a line.
And the motiviation to damage those rocks to begin with? What caused that?
That’s like Michael Scott (from TV’s “The Office”) walking into the middle of the room and shouting, “I...Declare....BANKRUPTCY!”
There’s more to it than the Colonists declaring independence. They knew that they were declaring a open, armed rebellion against the authority of the crown. They knew the likely consequences if they were to fail.
None of that existed in 1860. The southern states weren’t without representation. No armies were marching into their towns and seizing their citizens or their property. There was no moral or legal justification for quitting the union. Being angry isn’t justification.
But the point, and I'll have to trust you when you say you had one, was irrelevant to the question at hand. Which was the 3/5ths clause.
It says "Philippines", (I have no "new" machines. I don't believe in them.) but who knows where all the components came from?
But sure, the fact that other people might be doing bad, completely justifies the third world slavery practices of the Liberal Elite Apple computer corporation.
Given that all the Colonies were slave states at the time, I find this claim very unlikely. I think they would not have gotten signatories from the Norther states either at this point in history.
As usual you have it backwards. It was the south's "casus belli" not the north's.
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