Oh give me a break, the south wanted cheap labor. They were unconcerned about the personal fate of blacks. They would not have given up slavery without a fight.
Petitioners protest Confederate flag [flown by homeowner]
- Thread starter Brian Foley
- Start date
You really think it was that simple?
No, the world was changing and Slavery was on the way out, not just because people were awakening to the moral issues but the invention of the tractor and the cotton gin and various other labor saving farm implements were making the slave system ever less of an economic factor.
You can credit a lot of this to Jefferson, who owned slaves and is reported to have loved one.
His efforts were behind getting into the Constitution the ending of the importation of slaves.
The reasons were claimed to have been because of the horrible treatment of slaves and the barbaric way they were captured in the first place, but Jefferson was smarter than that, he knew that from then on the only way to increase the number of slaves was to breed them.
And that's what transformed the slave quarters after the Constitution was passed, was the importation of large numbers of black women.
And that changed slavery to black men toiling in the fields to the slave quarters being FAMILIES with CHILDREN and OLD people.
And that humanized them.
But this change also helped to force people to quit seeing blacks as so different from themselves and as an inferior race.
The net is if you do the research and read the politics of the time, a great deal of congressional effort was spent on trying to figure out a way to end slavery that relied on a compensation plan along with a relocation plan (we had more land than we knew what to do with)
There was no more a reason for War in the US then there was in any other country that ended slavery
Arthur
And segregation of Black people in America for 100 years after the Civil War was under the stars and stripes flag, yet Black Americans pledge allegiance to it each morning in school to this day.
It was not fought over slavery, Southern States knew if they broke away, their cotton had ready made markets with Britain and France. Britain and France were happy to encourage the Southern states to secede from the Industrial North, thereby weakening a rival. Literally the North stripped and colonized the South during and after the war because of it. Slavery like lebensraum was a smokescreen for imperial conquest.
Pandaemoni
Valued Senior Member
I support her right to fly the flag...*AND* I support their right to tell her that she should stop because it's racist. Free speech applies to both sides here, as the dirty left-wingers acknowledge in the statement:
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to protest the things other people say.
Certainly this is a far cry from having her "beaten" and her house "burned down."
a large percentage of them wouldn't be here if we hadn't kidnapped their ancestors and hauled them over here in chains. would you rather they didn't pledge allegiance to the country they now live in? i take it you would rather they hold a grudge? they have a hell of a lot to get over that i've never had to get over. at least they now get to look back and be proud at what they've overcome. i'm white. i pledge allegiance to the same flag, but i get to look back in shame that my ancestors were a bunch of hateful bigots. and before you say it, i'm talking about my grandparents. i sat down to a family dinner and had to hear the word nigger. black people my age had to sit down to a family dinner and hear about how their grandparents got falsely arrested, blasted with fire hoses, and beaten by cops for no damn reason. still to this day the shit goes on because of assholes like this lady waving their "i hate you, nigger" flags.
What I see, as the others on this thread do not, is that the slavery existed and was endorsed under the stars and stripes flag from 1790 - 1860, and after as well in the form of segregation. The people protesting the rebel flag cant see the similarity either, they protest that flag yet happily call the stars and stripes their own, a flag much more symbolic in their historic oppression.
Hauled to America in chains under this flag:
Thats the point, they swear allegiance to the flag above, a flag which was worse in their treatment.
Or maybe she had ancestors who fought in the Civil War under that flag like these Black Americans did:
Either way they have a right to be offended, but Im just wondering why no one sees the contradictions.
Hauled to America in chains under this flag:
Thats the point, they swear allegiance to the flag above, a flag which was worse in their treatment.
Or maybe she had ancestors who fought in the Civil War under that flag like these Black Americans did:
Either way they have a right to be offended, but Im just wondering why no one sees the contradictions.
the way i see it, the stars and stripes stands for united, and the confederate flag stands for divided. the way i see it, some people want to get over it, and some people don't. and the way i see it, you want to make this a history lesson when you can't possibly be stupid enough not to know exactly why this bitch has that flag in her front yard. you think there's some history major inside that house? you think there's a real scholar in there? all of the people i've known who would wave that flag don't read books. most of the people i've known who would wave that flag can't even speak the english language, and it's the only language they've ever been required to learn. most of those people don't know a damn thing but hate.
you mean do i agree with it. yes. and i would imagine the first sentence represents the mentality of abolitionists.
Or the way I see it, the stars and stripes stands for slavery, manifest destiny's mass murder or Red Indians, segregation and communist witch hunts, and people such as yourself swear allegiance to this flag.
I dont care for her reasons for flying this flag, I just cannot understand why the penny hasnt dropped on the Black community, or anyone else for that matter, concerning the Stars and Stripes record of disenfranchising and discriminating black Americans.
it has, and you've left out some atrocities that i can think of right off the top of my head, and that's exactly why i do care why she's flying that flag.
Well it was this sentence that South Carolina used to justify it's leaving the Union:
Like the original authors of the Declaration of Independence, they also outlined exactly why they were disolving the compact.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp
Arthur
if the southern states had been pocketing the money from all of that free labor for so long, why couldn't they cough up the grub stake?
Well the labor wasn't exactly free.
Because of the prohibition on importing slaves, the cost of existing slaves went up and then slaves lived in family units, which required housing, food, clothing and care for the young, pregnant, infirm and old who were no longer productive.
Also, similar to any communist type system, where there was really no incentive for slaves to produce, and so the typical slave did little more work then necessary to avoid punishment. Indeed if you read the stories for a long time after the civil war ended, this "move slow, talk slow and do as little as necessary" was ingrained as part of the culture.
To replace this system, they needed money to buy the new fangled tractors and gins and now hire people to replace the slave labor.
It was going to be an expensive proposition for the South.
The North wanted them to hurry it along, so the theory was, they should help pay for the transition.
Added to this was the fact that the Northerers were aiding in the stealing of this valuable property and using an 'underground railroad' to get the stolen property to the North, where the states were willfully ignoring the Constitution of the US and refusing to return the property.
In today's world it would be like anyone who can steal a car in the South and get it across the Mason Dixon line without being caught gets to keep it because laws passed in the North don't allow Southerners to get their stolen car back.
Arthur
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occidental
Registered Senior Member
What stories are you referring to? And who are you quoting?
This was a big research project for me thirty or so years ago.
What I read was mainly from magazine articles from the period after the war up until about 1900.
As I recall, articles in Harpers were particularly illuminating.
You'll probably have to do the same type of research, but the jist of a number of the articles was explaining difficulties that newly freed blacks had competing in a capitalist world when the system they had lived in for so long did not stress production and competion, just the opposite. Other stories were how these cultural traits, ingrained by hundreds of years of slavery, was to not stand out, to not move quickly, to not talk quickly, to conserve one's energy created negative sterotypes of blacks being lazy. I'm not absolutely certain, but I believe Maya Angelou mentions this in "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings".
I've never been a slave, but the articles seemed to have the ring of truth to them.
Arthur
What I read was mainly from magazine articles from the period after the war up until about 1900.
As I recall, articles in Harpers were particularly illuminating.
You'll probably have to do the same type of research, but the jist of a number of the articles was explaining difficulties that newly freed blacks had competing in a capitalist world when the system they had lived in for so long did not stress production and competion, just the opposite. Other stories were how these cultural traits, ingrained by hundreds of years of slavery, was to not stand out, to not move quickly, to not talk quickly, to conserve one's energy created negative sterotypes of blacks being lazy. I'm not absolutely certain, but I believe Maya Angelou mentions this in "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings".
I've never been a slave, but the articles seemed to have the ring of truth to them.
Arthur
you really think a human being and a car are comparable? perhaps that was the problem in the first place? gee...tough call.
and are you serious about the cost of the labor? you have got to be kidding. let's see...the slaves were working sun up to sun down, wearing rags, living in shacks, and eating shit, while the fragile little white folk were sitting their fat asses on the front porches of their mansions in their fancy duds, fanning themselves and barking orders between sips of lemonade and whiskey.
the fact is that the south had PLENTY of time to emancipate these people and treat them equitably and humanely, and they did not until they were forced to.
i'm an american, and i'm just fine with that. it may not have gone down perfectly, but it sure as hell was a step in the right direction.
i grew up in cincinnati ohio, which is on the northern bank of the ohio river. i've often looked out on that river, and tried to imagine what it was like to have to risk my life for freedom, swimming across in the middle of a winter's night. one of the few things i love about this city (besides that my family lives here), is that we were one of the major stops along that railroad. thank god for the people who cared enough to help. and those slaves, and those railroad helpers, weren't risking their lives and everything they had for no good reason.
Yes Lori, the cost of labor wasn't that low, a lot of land and time had to be given to the upkeep and feeding of the slaves. Having 6 men working in the field is one thing, but if there are 3 more back at the quarters who are too young or too old or infirm, then the amount of work you get is not that great, and as I said, a lot of the work they were doing was being replaced with mechanized forms, and so you simply didn't need all this labor and would be stuck with it, and you have to remember that the cost of hired labor was not that high either. Slavery was dying out because of moral issues and because of Economic issues.
The difference is that by phasing it out LEGALLY, then the transition could be handled humanely. Training, some land, a grub stake.
As it was, the worst time for blacks in that century was right after the Emancipation Proclamation. It was given towards the end of the war and the Union was making incursions through-out the South, and since there was no way to tell the difference between a Free black man living in the former slave quarters and a slave living in the slave quarters, the Southerners, to avoid fear of being punished by Union troops for having slaves, forced them en mass off of the farms. Now, they were free, but they were also homeless. Much of the violence against blacks at the time was because of the bands of homeless blacks who were essentially forced to resort to thievery to feed their families.
http://www.civilwarhome.com/freedmen.htm
Lori, you can't apply today's morality to the 1860s, because at the time, it was perfectly legal to own slaves, so yes they were considered by law to be similar to cars. Indeed, as I've shown the US Constitution specifically allowed slavery and required slaves that escaped to non-slave states to be returned. Had you lived back then you might not agree with the law, and citizens always have the right to engage in Civil Disobedience, but STATES do not. States are supposed to uphold the Constitution.
The failure of the Northern States to uphold the Constitution is what convinced South Carolina to leave the Union.
It took the slaughter of over 600,000 people to force them to stay, more than twice the US casualties of WW2.
Hawaii has been talking about seceding, if the people of the Islands voted and like South Carolina, 3/4 of them agreed to secede, would you support a military approach to making them stay? Would bombing Honolulu seem too much or should we just strafe the beaches?
Arthur
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