Posted on 11/19/2001 6:28:43 AM PST by tberry
No, though DeBows logically would have watched the results carefully and may have compiled their own numbers. They oversaw the contracting of the census takers etc. The contracting would have been done with the proper Federal authority, but just like the press and the mails, the process was carefully scrutinized. Southern society was not free. This was a necessity of having 3.5 million slaves. Every county had organized vigilance committees of free whites who were required to patrol the roads at night, usually well into the early morning. In the 1850's, the system was so effective that very few blacks made it out at all.
The patrol system easily turned itself into the KKK after the war. In essence, the effectiveness of the KKK was due to the fact that it had essentially long before been organized and instituted, though under the name of the Vigilance committees. The Vigilance committees played a vital role for King Cotton in controlling the voting in elections before the war, just as the KKK proved so adept at the same game after the war.
Both the mail and the press were censored, if not by pre-print review, certainly by response to any materials considered to put a negative view on slavery. It was not at all uncommon to have newspapers closed down for expressing the wrong thouhts, and the mail system was such that everyone had their business poked into with a fair amount of nosiness. It was all viewed in the common interest, but it was intolerance of the first class.
There were a number of grave errors in the 1787 constitution, and certainly the 3/5ths rule was a major one. Large slave owners had a profoundly stronger political influence on all levels of the government, from the Feds on down. This was particularly magnified by the fact that the southern Congressman were the conduits for the Federal pork which was such a major part of the southern economy. Federal expenses for the Freedman's Bureau, which spent more money on poor southern whites than on southern blacks were actually less than the total graft and financial support the southern states received through almost every federal agency and program. Given there weren't many at the time, it was quite remarkable. Southern Custom houses handled a mere fraction of the tariff responsibilities, yet they all cost many many times the price of the New York custom house that handled the by far the largest part of it. Military infrastructure expenses predominated in the south. Millions were spent on antiquated forts like Ft Sumter. Most Northern cities had not such forts, but Charleston had three. All built by slave labor charged off at 3 bucks a head an hour while the slaves were compensated at about 7 dollars a year. Land schemes, the post office, fugitive slave marshalls, state militia's, mints etc. The list goes on and on. On top of that was the private debts and the long list of Northern companies gone bankrupt from cancelled southern debts. Small wonder that secession in the North didn't cause all that much stir at first. A lot of Northerners were probably happy to see the nonsense go, but eventually the realiziation of the fact that if the North didn't support them, someone else in Europe would starting setting off the alarms.
Poppycock. It was paid for by the Federal government, don't make up silly stories like that.
Forts like it could be reduced to rubble by the artillery of the day in only a few hours. As it was, it was very badly torn up with the relatively few hours of southern shelling with older weapons instead of the stuff of the day that was high tech.
Where did you get this information please?
Oh please. Without slavery, and specifically without to Southern Slavocracy using all of their powers to force the expansion of slavery into the west, there would never have been a civil war. Tarrifs were a minor issue because they were a relatively small tax, and the only way the federal government had to raise money in those days. It was not about taxes and it was not about states rights. There was no right for states to leave the union and the Constitution is not a contract between the states and the federal government. It is a contract between the people of the United States, as in We The People, and the Federal government. The States did not have a right to break that contract.
The civil war was all about a small but wealthy cadre of politically powerful Slave owners who wanted to expand their market in human misery beyond its existing boarders. When blocked by Lincoln's election they attempted to break the union and drive the nation into war. Think back --- remember your history. What was the Compromise of 1820 about? Slavery. What was the Compromise of 1850 about? Slavery. What was Bloody Kansas about in the late 50s? Slavery. For a full 40 years before Lincoln's election the south, or more rightly the corrupt slave owning aristrocrats that ran the southern legislatures like petty fifedoms, continually pushed and threatened to break the union over the question of slavery. It was all about wealth and power for those bastards. They didn't give a damn about the constitution. That war would have never happened without slavery.
BS. It was the cornerstone of the Southern economy. It was not what we would conside smart economics, but it made one hell of a lot of money for the big slave holders.
Again, what's the problem here? Some Southerners saw the evil in slavery and more power to them. More Northerners recognized this and did something about this, and good for them. Some Southerners saw the problem earlier, because it was such a large part of their lives. Enough Southerners say this to make their concerns felt, but not enough to actually do anything about it, though. Northerners may not have noticed the problem so early because it was less visible -- though some Northerners, like Quakers and some Germans recognized it from the beginning. Having noticed it they were able to do something about it, because there were fewer slaves in their states. Where is the problem? What happened happened. We can remember and honor those who believed in what we think good, but surely there's little point in ranking this state or region against that one.
It is, to a large extent, an accident of time and place that the North didn't have slavery and the South did. If the land and climate were more suited to large plantations, as in the South, and if that first Dutch shipload of Africans had landed in Plymouth instead of Jamestown, how would history be different? If the Pilgrims had landed in Virginia, as they were intending to do until a storm forced them up north, how would their descendent feel about slavery?
Yes, and had the Muslims settled the North and the Chinese settled the South, Northerners would be bowing to the East and Southerners would be worshipping their ancestors -- more so than they actually do. In point of fact the Dutch controlled New York and kept a large number of slaves there. As we've discussed, there were slaves in New York but it didn't last past 1827. And of course if slavery had lasted in NY it would have been a black mark against them and if it hadn't it's still a black mark against them -- we've gone over that already. One could connect the different reasons why Puritans and Cavaliers came to this land and the subsequent development of their regions. I'd have to agree though that climate made the biggest difference in what happened later. Puritans in hot climates did own slaves, but so what?
Just what is this supposed to prove? If all the Puritans lived in the South they'd be Southerners and all the Cavaliers lived in the North they'd be Northerners. And? What do you want? Some kind of absolution or vindication? You don't need it personally. None of this was your fault. And your ancestors -- and ours -- were imperfect human beings, sinners all, who shared the faults of their time and place. Do you want people to say that antebellum Southerners weren't inherently or essentially or biologically bad people? O.K. fine. They acted as they saw fit by the codes of the time, but I'd think about why you need such reassurance. There is enough guilt and glory in our past to go around for everyone. That some Northerner did this or that doesn't mean that Southerners were saints or vice versa.
One argument that R.P. Warren and other Southerners have developed is the idea that the Union acted as though it had some great "treasury of virtue," and treated the South as though it was its moral inferior. Now we can see that the North and the country as a whole has committed sins of its own. No one would argue that the rest of the country was somehow uniquely innocent and the South uniquely guilty.
But so many neo-Confederates simply turn the tables. They find faults in the North and argue that somehow the Confederacy was uniquely virtuous and a defender of liberty against the evil North. This is a very simplistic view and scarcely justified by the facts. So many Southern nationalists feel the sting of past Northern reproach and want to do something about it -- to turn the tables. At the same time, they want to restore that simple tale of good, virtuous Southerners and evil, grasping Yankees. For the Confederacy has its own "treasury of virtue" myth. Warren called it "the great alibi." One might have thought that we could see the war more in its tragic context rather than looking for wholly evil villains to set against wholly innocent and virtuous heroes and martyrs. But I suppose that's asking for too much. Curiously, the "great alibi" has been forgotten, or it's been taken for the truth.
The approach many take here of trading this factlet for that in tit for that in tit for tat fashion -- Who wore women's clothing? What Lee's wife's family did with their slaves vs. what Grant's wife's did with theirs -- really doesn't advance anything, because instead of seeing just what the significant and agreed-upon facts are we just throw in another accusation at the other side. I don't mean you personally, it's just a general impression.
So only saints are allowed opinions in your world?
Well he did destroy the freedom of some people to own other people. I'll give you that. What other freedoms did he destroy?
However that still doesn't excuse the point that slavery was not brought up as a rallying cry in the north until '62 and therefore not an issue with lincoln until he had exhausted all of his other avenues of support. By that time, the general citizenry had lost interest and wanted the South just to go away, but you don't see much of that sentiment in the papers of the time because the Tyrant had suspended the 1st Amendment and shut down over 300 newspapers
Catch you later.
Source please. Everything I have see shows the Northern press beating Lincoln up pretty good until after Getteysburg. Even after that, some of the major papers in New Youk were Copperhead publications and they were never shut down. What's your source for him shutting down 300 papers?
And I think WhiskeyPapa tourched Rebel Soldier's deer stand and Leesylvania's two seater privy out behind the big house.
Later. Got to go to the store.
Actually, in article six, the following is stated:
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution notwithstanding."
Walt
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