302. ScotusAntonovich - Dec. 31, 1998 - 7:11 AM PT
Re: Message #298, cllrdr.
"Celebration? I'd call it Denial."
While I agree with GJ's above post, I think one reason Southern "heroes" are portrayed as such even today is many, many Southerns grew up and still are miffed at the North for coming down here and daring to tell us how we are to conduct ourselves and be dictated to by the North.
Thus, many Southerns are somewhat vindicated when some Southern leaders are elevated to icon status.
303. glendajean - Dec. 31, 1998 - 7:11 AM PT
Lee isn't the best example of southern attitudes about slavery. His even considering the Union command probably had something to do with his service in the military and loyalities he might have felt to the army, an institution he had served in his entire adult life.
The firebrands in the south made it quite uncomfortable for anybody to be anything less than pro-slavery, anti-federal (read Northern) interference. The small group of slave owners managed to spin or sell the idea that Southern best interest lay in keeping slavery viable.
There is an interesting story in Texas during the decision to secede. Sam Houston (who had served as the first president of the Republic of Texas and as a U.S. Senator after annexation) was elected governor just prior to the civil war.
Houston was a Jacksonian Democrat and strongly believed in the Union. He refused to allow secession or support it. Over his opposition, a secession convention was called. Lincoln offered him troops to stay in power and keep Texas from joining the confederacy. While Houston turned him down, he was removed from office for his views on secession.
304. 109109 - Dec. 31, 1998 - 7:17 AM PT
glenda
Reconstruction, when compared to the fratricide that occurs in other countries after civil war, was a walk in the park. And a loss of a vote, after two hundred years of involuntary servitude, is, in historical terms, picayune. The reality is that slavery of Africans was introduced in the 1600s, the country went to war in part over the issue 250 years later, and 100 years after that, universal civil rights was completed and codified in law. During that period, the combatants in the civil war never again took up arms against each other.
As for reputation, I always weep for poor Longstreet.
305. cllrdr - Dec. 31, 1998 - 7:20 AM PT
"The nation bashed its brains in bloody for four years over a variety of questions - including the moral issue of slavery"
Just how important the "slavery issue" was or wasn't has been bandied about in this thread like a tennis ball. Nobody seems to want to make up their mind. It's perfectly obvious to me that the war was about a lot more than slavery. And a lot less. To my mind, war is it's own *raison d'etre* the opportunity to kill massive amounts of total strangers with impunity. What get me is the way the war has been thron back in African-American faces, especially in what must now be called the pos-O.J. period of Amererican history. I'd love to have nickel for every white American who has knee-jerk pontificated to me about how whites fought and died so that *I* could be "free." So what's the story *now*?
109?
306. 109109 - Dec. 31, 1998 - 7:25 AM PT
cllrdr
"It's perfectly obvious to me that the war was about a lot more than slavery. And a lot less."
Agreed.
"What get me is the way the war has been thron back in African-American faces, especially in what must now be called the pos-O.J. period of Amererican history. I'd love to have nickel for every white American who has knee-jerk pontificated to me about how whites fought and died so that *I* could be "free." So what's the story *now*?"
I can't help you, other than to say, the class of whites you converse with should be upgraded (and this may very well include me, though, according to the EEOC, I'm Hispanic). On two fronts. First, you should find whites who aren't so prone to idiotic blandishments. Second, you should not hang out with whites over 138 years of age.
307. glendajean - Dec. 31, 1998 - 7:26 AM PT
Longstreet was the only Republican in the crowd later. He was the one who questioned Lee's judgements, and those of his fellow generals at Gettysburg.
Most of the lionization of Lee was also used to discredit him by Hill and others.
Your long view of the end of slavery is provocative, but I don't share in thinking that it was a sweet and pat story. For the people who continued to live in the south under Jim Crow, who experienced terror and fear from lynchings and public burnings, for those who were beaten up or killed during the civil rights struggles, this time was dramatic and painful, to say the least.
I will grant you this. There has always been a desire in this country to either ignore or assume that our racial problems were something that was ended by the civil war or by civil rights laws, something that was a quick historical oddity. Like the old testament prescription that the sins of the parents will be visited upon the children, the history of slavery and our attempts to deal with it continue, and the distrust between the races is major theme in American history and development. It didn't start overnight, and unfortunately the effects from it have not ended.
308. 109109 - Dec. 31, 1998 - 7:29 AM PT
glenda
"Your long view of the end of slavery is provocative, but I don't share in thinking that it was a sweet and pat story. For the people who continued to live in the south under Jim Crow, who experienced terror and fear from lynchings and public burnings, for those who were beaten up or killed during the civil rights struggles, this time was dramatic and painful, to say the least."
You mix apples and oranges. The plight of the black was pretty crappy, from the role of slave to the role of second-class citizen (in the North and South). In fact, African-Americans face continued bleakness in many areas. But I have restricted my observations to the nation after the Civil War, a war that encompassed many issues.
"I will grant you this. There has always been a desire in this country to either ignore or assume that our racial problems were something that was ended by the civil war or by civil rights laws, something that was a quick historical oddity. Like the old testament prescription that the sins of the parents will be visited upon the children, the history of slavery and our attempts to deal with it continue, and the distrust between the races is major theme in American history and development. It didn't start overnight, and unfortunately the effects from it have not ended."
Nor will they ever. Folks mistreat each other for all sorts of absurd reasons. Skin color seems as foolish as any other.
309. cllrdr - Dec. 31, 1998 - 7:43 AM PT
"Second, you should not hang out with whites over 138 years of age."
Actually it's the under 38 crowd that gets to me, Niner.
310. ScotusAntonovich - Dec. 31, 1998 - 7:44 AM PT
Thanks, cellar.
311. LadyChaos - Dec. 31, 1998 - 10:06 AM PT
Re: Message #305, cllrdr,
I ditto 109's response to this. Sensible people know that it's silly to lay claim to the suffering of previous generations. You need to get out of Hollywood from time to time.
312. cllrdr - Dec. 31, 1998 - 1:21 PM PT
It's not just Hollywood, LadyC. This is the standard line, hawked day after relentless day, by Slush Limberger and every other "conservative" talk jock in the country.
313. CalGal - Dec. 31, 1998 - 1:48 PM PT
Well, Cellar, you said that these white people pontificated to *you*; it certainly seemed as if you were talking about your own friends. Me, I just assumed they were also local.
314. Hanspragma - Jan. 1, 1999 - 9:02 AM PT
stostosto, regarding #209. You asked, "Why exactly would wage labour and slave labour be economically incompatible?" Because they are tokens of two very different types. Slave labour is a token of a society founded on STATUS. Wage labour is a token of a society founded on CONTRACT. In those places and periods where and when the human race can be said to be making any progress at all, it is by moving away from status, toward contract.
In European history books, feudalism is the classic case of a status-based society -- everyone had a rank derived from their birth, and obeyed rigid customs about how they must live, as a result. The rise of the merchant trader allowed some room for contract, for relations based upon bargains, bickering, mutuality of interest, etc.
No matter how bad a wage laborer's position may be, the bosses' obligation to pay him a specified sum at the end of the week, month, whatever indicates a mutuality, indicates freedom, hope, and a lot of other positive baggage. This difference was, and is, monumental. Although when push comes to shove the pushers and the shovers sometimes only dimly perceive what is at stake.
315. ScottLoar - Jan. 1, 1999 - 2:58 PM PT
"Time on the Cross" (continued): Chapter Three, Profits and Prospects
(This chapter begins with a review of past economic analyses of slavery, principally its "dubious" profitability which supposedly dictated eventual self-strangulation of the institution, especially the views of the Phillips school and its offshoots pro and contra, and the extrapolations and conjectures advanced as a consequence of those studies, many of which have already been presented in this forum under one guise or another. I will not recount those arguments but summarize as best I can Fogel and Engerman's work which is what this synopsis is all about.)
316. ScottLoar - Jan. 1, 1999 - 3:07 PM PT
Earlier studies (Alfred H. Conrad and John R. Meyer) had discovered "a high and persistent rate of profit on slaves", adjusted to about 10% which compared favourably with "the average rate of return earned by nine of the most successful New England textile firms over the period from 1844 through 1853 (of) 10.1 percent. And a group of twelve southern railroads averaged 8.5 percent for the decade 1850-1860". Moreover, there is no extraordinary pricing level beyond that market price for slaves set by normal business standards, further militating against the supposition that owning slaves was a common practice of conspicuous consumption. Fig.15, pg. 72, The Distribution of Male Slave Prices by Age in the Old South (Old South referring to those exporting states) derived from the sale prices of 5,000 slaves shows (o)n average, prices rose until the late twenties and then declined. The decline was slow at first but then became more rapid, until advanced ages were reached". Fig. 16, pg. 72, Averages of Price Relatives by Age for Males Slaves in the Old South further illustrates the curve describing the relation between price and age. "What explains the age pattern of price? Conspicuous consumption and other non-pecuniary arguments offered to explain the trend in slave prices over time clearly fail here. It seems hardly likely that twenty-six-year-olds were priced twice as high as ten-year-olds because twice as much honour and prestige were attached to the owners of the older than of the younger slaves".
317. ScottLoar - Jan. 1, 1999 - 3:12 PM PT
Fig. 17, pg. 74, Annual Net Earnings from Male Slaves by Age about 1850, Old South shows net earnings were negative until about age 8, then turned positive until reaching a peak at age 35, then declined but still remained positive into age 65 and beyond and even exceeded the net earnings of teenagers. This misserves the argument that slaves were worked to death at a relatively early age to avoid maintenance of the aged. The curve in fig.18, pg. 76, Prices of Slaves by Age and Sex about 1850, Old South, correlates the curve in fig. 19, pg. 76, Annual Net Earnings from Slaves by Age and Sex about 1850, Old South, showing that the price of females consistently trailed males by 20-40% excepting that "prior to age eighteen, female earnings (slightly) exceeded those of males" and price almost equal.
318. ScottLoar - Jan. 1, 1999 - 3:15 PM PT
Although careful not to discount paternalism, still "while we do not mean to imply that affection for slaves was purely a function of their earning capacity, we do mean to suggest that it was more usual for affection and productivity to reinforce each other than to conflict with each other. Both cruely and affection had their place on southern plantations".
319. ScottLoar - Jan. 1, 1999 - 3:22 PM PT
Despite the diligent efforts of historians through tens of thousands of hours of research not one authenticated case of breeding plantation has been uncovered, nor any set of instructions to overseers discovered which explicity or implicitly encouraged or advanced eugenic breeding. Fig. 20, pg. 80, Division of Female Price between the Value of the Childbearing Capacity and the Value of the Field Capacity, New South (referring to those importing states) as compared to fig. 21,pg. 81, Division of Female Price between the Value of the Childbearing Capacity and the Value of the Field Capacity, Old South, shows childbearing females were more valued in the importing than in the exporting states, "the present value of the childbearing capacity was $170 in Louisiana in 1850 but only $80 in the Old South" which further disproves the convention that exporting states "concentrated on child rearing (for resale) and the New South on field production". Further, fig. 22, pg.82, Division of Annual Net Earnings from Females between Childbearing Capacity and Field Earnings, by Age, Old South, "shows that on average, net income from childbearing was only about 10 percent of the total net income earned by women during their childbearing years".
320. ScottLoar - Jan. 1, 1999 - 3:27 PM PT
Prices of slaves slumped badly around 1781 (fig.23, pg.87, An Index of Real Slave Prices in the Unites States, 1772-1810) correlating with a drop in demand (fig.24, pg. 23, An Index of the Course of the Demand for Slaves, 1772-1810) then "rebounded to roughly the pre-Revolutionary level by the mid-1780s and remained on a fairly high plateau for the rest of the decade". This temporary depression in price may very well have been a consequence of the massive imports during the same period as slaveowners increased their holdings and so may not be construed as evidence that the institution was in jeopardy of extinction save the cotton revolution which supposedly rejuvenated slavery. Throughout, until the legal proscription of 1808, the US was a net importer of slaves.
321. ScottLoar - Jan. 1, 1999 - 3:37 PM PT
Even as cotton production increased (fig.25, pg.90, The Course of Cotton Production [in thousands of bales], 1791-1861), leaping from 1840 onwards then doubling between 1850 and 1860, increasing by over 50% between 1857 and 1860, cotton prices fell more or less erratically (ScottLoar commentary: showing spikes I would think indicative of speculation in cotton warehouse receipts) (fig. 26, pg. 91, The Course of Cotton Prices, 1802-1861), averaging 0.7% yearly. The decrease in price as a consequence of the increase in productivity, just as the output of cotton cloth by Northern mills tripled between 1822 and 1827 as the price of cloth declined by 35%. Yet one cannot infer decreasing profitability. Fig.27, pg. 92, The Deviation of Cotton Prices from Their Trend Values, 1802-1861, "indicates that the 1850s constituted a period of sustained boom in profits for cotton planters... that outstripped even the fable prosperity of the 1830s" with prices during the last four years of the decade "averaging about 15 percent above their trend values. No wonder cotton production doubled between 1850 and 1860". Worldwide demand for cotton rapidly increased from 1846 onward with an average increase over the next 15 years of about 7% yearly yet still increase could not meet increased demand as illustrated by fig. 28, pg. 92, A Comparison between Indexes of Cotton Demanded and Supplied, 1820-1861. In short, cotton planters profited hugely and could not plant more or fast enough to meet demand.
322. ScottLoar - Jan. 1, 1999 - 3:40 PM PT
Fig. 29, pg. 97, The Predicted Course of Slave Prices, in the Absence of a Civil War, for the decade 1881-1890, shows "prime hands in 1890 would have sold at 52 percent more than they did in 1860", supported in part by the fact that "land devoted to cotton nearly doubled between 1860 and 1890; it more than doubled between 1890 and 1925". This refutes the "natural limits" claim that "the rise in ratio of slave labor to land eventually would have reduced the value of a slave to less than his subsistence cost".
323. ScottLoar - Jan. 1, 1999 - 3:48 PM PT
Assuming incompatability of slavery with an urban environment fig. 30, pg. 99, Decade Rates of Change in the Slave Populations of Three Southern Cities (Richmond, Charleston, St. Louis) and in Slave Prices illustrates "the pattern in prices is 'exactly the reverse' of the pattern exhibited by the slave population. In other words, the urban slave population increased most rapidly when slave prices were increasing most slowly; and the slave population decreased (or increase most slowly) when slave prices were increasing most rapidly". Fig. 31, pg. 100, Indexes of the Demand for Slaves in the Cities and the Countryside, for the period from 1820-1860 shows - from about 1833 - the demand in the cities outstripped that in the countryside. Of the top ten southern cities only St. Louis in the 1830s, New Orleans in the 1840s, and Baltimore and Charleston in the 1850s showed a temporary decline in demand; the cities of Mobile, Savannah, Richmond, Montgomery, Memphis and Louisville all experienced increasing demand for slaves. Temporary decline in the slave population in the cities can be explained by increase rural demand with its competition in price, and in some instances substitution of immigrant labour or skills for which there was no close substitute in rural areas. In whole this refutes the contention that slavery was incompatible with urbanization.
324. ScottLoar - Jan. 1, 1999 - 3:55 PM PT
Fig. 32, pg. 104, An Index of the Sanguinity of Slaveholders, 1830-1860, attempts to illustrate the optimism of slaveholders to the future, based "on the ratio of the average purchase price of slaves to their average annual hire rate", premising that an investor in slaves purchased so assuming the future would be more lucrative than the present, and "when they expected the economic situation to deteriorate in the future, the purchase price fell relative to the hire rate". Expectations in the New South were consistently more extreme than in the Old South (ScottLoar commentary: as was the level of investment and hence risk), showing general pessimism during the 1840s to mid-1850s in the Old South during which the New South's optimism was rebounding by 1850, and in both areas "(d)uring the decade of the fifites sanguinity was increasing quite rapidly, accounting for 40 percent of the rise in slave prices in the Old South and 75 percent of the rise in the New South. Slaveholders not only expected their social order to endure but foresaw an era of prosperity".
325. ScottLoar - Jan. 2, 1999 - 3:46 AM PT
"Time on the Cross" (continued): Chapter Four, The Anatomy of Exploitation
Specified rations of port and corn were distributed throughout the year as basic foodstuffs but cannot be construed as the sole content of a slave's diet. In addition, beef, mutton, milk, butter, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, peas, wheat and minor grains probably comprised "80 percent of the caloric content of slaves" similar in kind to the diet of whites and blacks in the mid-19th century, and although slightly disproportionate in specifics yet higher in caloric content than the general population, exceeding "that of free men in 1879 by more than 10 percent". Fig. 33, pg. 112, A Comparison of the Average Daily Food Consumption of Slaves in 1860 with the average Daily Food Consumption of the Entire Population in 1879 shows the eleven foods of the slave yielding an average daily energy value of 4,185 calories while all foods of the free yield 3,741. Fig. 34, pg. 114, The Nutritional Value of the Slave Diet: Average Slave Consumption of Various Nutrients in 1860 as a Percentage of Modern Recommended Daily Allowances shows "(t)he slave diet was not only adequate (it) exceeded the daily recommended (1964) level of proteins by 110 percent, calcium by 20 percent, and iron by 230 percent", that of vitamin A by 1,270%, thiamine by 475%, vitamin C 252%, etc.
326. ScottLoar - Jan. 2, 1999 - 3:52 AM PT
Slave housing as determined from the census of 1860 was 5.2 slaves per house on average on large plantations (fig. 35, pg. 114, The Distribution of Slaves on Large Plantations, by Persons per Slave House, 1860), and as the number of persons per free household was 5.3 it can be assumed that most slaves lived in single-family households yet probably containing more square feet of sleeping space than the median number of 35 available to the housing of workers in New York City in 1893. The composition of slave housing "compared well with the housing of free workers in the antebellum era". The clothing allotment was adequate although the common issue for children was a single-piece shift: Table 2, pg. 118, Clothing Recommended for an Adult Worker by Social-work Agencies in New York City in 1907 Compared with the "Typical" Clothing Allotment for an Adult Male Slave allows a comparison.
327. ScottLoar - Jan. 2, 1999 - 3:58 AM PT
Plantation records, instructions to overseers on the disposition of the sick and encouraging hygiene, houses and rooms reserved as infirmaries, and doctors' billing records showing they commonly attended to all persons on the plantation evidence a general concern for the well-being of slaves. Demographic evidence attests to a lower maternal death rate among slaves than southern white women, an infant mortality rate of 183 per thousand roughly equivalent to the 1850 infant death rate among southern whites of 177 per thousand - both of which were higher than the 146 per thousand for all white infants. "Although the life expectation of slaves in 1850 was 12 percent below the average of white Americans" it was nearly the same as that for Holland and France, and longer than Italy in 1885, Austria in 1875, Chile in 1920, Manchester in 1850, and longer than life expectancy in New York, Boston and Philadelphia in 1830 (fig. 36, pg. 125, The Life Expectation at Birth for U.S. Slaves and Various Free Populations, 1830-1920).
328. ScottLoar - Jan. 2, 1999 - 4:09 AM PT
Family life among slaves was encouraged for reason that the family "was the administrative unit for the distribution of food and clothing and for the provision of shelter", it was an instrument to maintain labour discipline and to promote increase of the slave population. Although slave marriages were denied de jure by the legal codes of several states the reality of slave ownership and law of the plantation allowed so de facto, creating a dualism similar to practice in medieval life and its duality "between the law of the manor and of the crown". Moreover, "Victorian attitudes predominated in the planting class" and although sexual exploitation of the women doubtlessly occurred the incidence of such was so infrequent as not to destroy the family institution, contrary to the accounts of travellers and abolitionists. The incidence of mulattoes in the population suggests that "the share of Negro children fathered by whites on slave plantations probably averaged between 1 and 2 percent". The average net annual income of those owning 50 or more slaves exceeded $7,500 which was more than 60 times the 1860 per capita income, allowing such a man to maintain a mistress or visit brothels (ScottLoar commentary: such practice seemed to be the custom and miscegenation, a word coined at the time, was socially opprobrious). The 1860 census shows "just 4.3 percent of the prostitutes in (Nashville) were Negroes, although a fifth of the population... was Negro. Moreover, all of the Negro prostitutes were free and light-skinned". Half of the prostitutes were fully illiterate, meaning "the supply of prostitutes was drawn from poor, uneducated girls who could only command the wages of unskilled labor".
329. ScottLoar - Jan. 2, 1999 - 4:16 AM PT
Fig. 37, pg.138, The Distribution of First Births, by the Ages of Slave Mothers, puts the average age at first birth at 22.5 (median 20.8 years of age), further supporting testimonial that "(d)em's moral times. A gal's twenty-one fore she marry. They didn't go wanderin' 'round all hours. They mammies knowed where they was". Fig. 38, pg. 140, The Distribution of Age Differences between Slave Husbands and Wives "shows that most marriages were contracted among partners quite close in age...the average age difference between husband and wife was just three years".
A division of labour defined and secured the male's role as family head even as planters recognized husbands as head of the family, issued rations and assigned housing in the name of the husband, registered slave families under the name of the husband and advanced cash or payment in the name of the husband for monies or crops earned by the family.
330. ScottLoar - Jan. 2, 1999 - 4:23 AM PT
Whipping was a common form of punishment and to enforce discipline before the nineteenth century, yet even on a plantation of 200 slaves where whipping was customary the incidence over a two-year period averaged 0.7 whippings per field hand per year, and about half were not whipped at all during the time (fig.40, pg. 145,The Distribution of Whippings on the Bennet H. Barrow Plantation during a Two-Year Period Beginning in December, 1840). Planters commonly sought to motivate their slaves by rewards as well as punishments (one elaborate profit sharing scheme of an Alabama planter in recounted on pg. 149), through bonuses in cash or goods at year's end, through acreage given over to tilling of cash crops by the family, and the opportunity to rise within the plantation's social and economic hierarchy although apprenticeships and positions of responsibility were "frequently delayed until slaves reached their late twenties... or thirties". Manumission through philanthropy or self-purchase was not unknown although census data in 1850 indicate the rate as just 0.45 per thousand slaves.
331. ScottLoar - Jan. 2, 1999 - 4:30 AM PT
The "basic income" (i.e. "the value of the food, clothing, shelter and medical care furnished to slaves") of an adult male slave in 1850 was about $48. The scattered cases known suggest a ratio of average extra earnings for field hands of 2.5 and that for artisans of about 4.5. Fig. 41, pg. 154, The Average Accumulated Value (Expected Present Value) of the Income Expropriated from Slaves over the Course of the Life Cycle "presents the average accumulated value... of the income that was expropriated at each age of the life cycle. Prior to age twenty-six, the accumulated expenditures by planters on slaves were greater than the average accumulated income which they took from them.(Afterwards) the reverse was true. Planters broke even early in the twenty-seventh year". The lateness is due to the high cost of capital in the South and high mortality rates by which 40% of slaves died before age nineteen (similar to southern whites), which is why US planters encouraged fertility as opposed to those in Jamaica where "life expectation fell below the break-even age".
332. ScottLoar - Jan. 2, 1999 - 2:32 PM PT
"Time on the Cross" (continued): Chapter Five, The Origins of the Economic Indictment of Slavery
As the title suggests the condemnation of slavery on moral grounds passed to an indictment of slavery on economic grounds, first espoused most cleary by Cassius Marcelles Clay (ScottLoar commentary:!) that "slavery was an inefficient form of economic organization" and retarded economic growth and development by restricting education, wasted capital in the purchase of slaves, discouraged the development of mechanical skills, and retarded the growth of manufacturing, yet without factual evidence.
Hinton Rowan Helper undertook a "macroeconomic" study published in 1857 as The Impending Crisis of the South, which compared the growth of 3 pairs of states 1790-1850 and so extrapolated a comparison between free and slave states. His findings "showed that the free states led the slave states by substantial margins in such matters as total wealth, manufacturing production, investment in railroads and canals, issues of patents... and even in the value of agriculture". By a series of exaggeration, confusion, mishandling of scarce economic data adn ineptness in compararisons Helper's work cannot withstand rigorous examination if compared with more accurate and complete data with objective analysis.
333. ScottLoar - Jan. 2, 1999 - 2:40 PM PT
Frederick Law Olmsted was commissioned by the New York Times to write a series of articles based on firsthand experience of the South, which collected became The Cotton Kingdom printed shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War. Offering a wealth of incisive commentary on all aspects of Southern culture Olmsted "concluded that the peculiar institution kept not just slaves but virtually the entire free population in deep poverty" as slave labour was inefficient and inferior to free Northern labour. "As with Helper, Olmsted's attempt to make use of census data to evaluate the performance of the slave economy was deeply flawed", as in his measure of labour efficiency (underestimating the value of output and overestimating the labour input) and miscalculation of slaveholders' income. Moreover, despite his travels Olmsted spent half his time in the South after harvest, much of his time in cities or in transit, and more time in the homes of planters and overseers than in the fields. Much of what he reported was a recitation of what others told him about the quality of slave labour.
334. ScottLoar - Jan. 2, 1999 - 2:44 PM PT
The fundamental premise of both Helper and Olmsted was that "black slave labor was inherently inferior to white free labor", if not only for supposed reasons of inferior character and lower natural ability than whites (Helper and Clay) but further deprived of civilization and industry by the institution of slavery which even if expunged would not alter the racial limitations of blacks who yet could be improved by manumission to "trusting (blacks) with equal social munities with ourselves" (Olmsted).
335. ScottLoar - Jan. 2, 1999 - 2:51 PM PT
An extension and reinforcement of Olmsted's work was John Elliott Cairnes' The Slave Power, amended and republished in 1863, which advanced four propositions as the economic supports needed by slavery:
"1. There had to be a demand for crops which could be more efficiently produced on a large scale than on a small scale;
"2. The method of cultivation of these crops had to require large amounts of labor per unit of land;
"3. Soils had to be of a high fertility and practically unlimited in extent;
"4. There had to be a substantial interregional slave trade".
These propositions acknowledged some mean profitability for slavery yet maintained it was an inefficient system which retarded economic and social growth in the South. Crude and unskilled slave labour was suited only to massive agriculture, was held incompatible with urbanization and manufacturing, and the possible congregation of large numbers of slaves in the cities would be disallowed for fear of insurrection.
The deleterious effects of slavery and its premise of economic inviability would hold unchallenged up to the application of cliometrics on that peculiar institution.
336. phillipdavid - Jan. 3, 1999 - 10:04 PM PT
ScottLoar,
Two thngs: what Time on the Cross reports about the slaves' diet surpises me. From the several autobiographies, and other narrative sources I have read, their diet was much more restrictive -- at least not as varied nor as plentiful. Corn, pork, fat and molasses was the basic foodstuff, although I have read reports that slaves could grow their own gardens (and hunt racoons and possums and fish as additional supplaments) on their own time.
The report you cite compared a slaves' diet with that of a freeman living in 1876, and I thought that might be misleading considering the economic climate of 1876.
I would like your opinion about what _Time on the Cross_ reported wrt caloric intake and variety of diet.
Second, I have read a few diaries of southern planatation wives that revealed they were very aware of their husband's infidelities. One woman wrote with disgust how her husband pretended to be a Christian gentleman all the while every second black child runing around the place had his features. So I am a little surprised at the report you cited about how low the incidence of mulatoes was. What is your opinion?
337. arkymalarky - Jan. 4, 1999 - 4:45 AM PT
Those are two things that I was dubious about as well.
338. ScottLoar - Jan. 4, 1999 - 5:09 AM PT
Phillipdavid; From my readings of "Time on the Cross" I conclude most southern plantation owners, especially of the larger plantations, were very careful stewards of their land, slaves and money. I have no reason to doubt the caloric content if we further assume the kinds of foods they ate - you did not allow for sweet potatoes and the authors did not allow for common "greens". The comparison with 1876 is, I suppose, for reason that that data is readily available. Still, farming diets worldwide are notoriously high in calories and fatty foods, and underfed people just can't work hard under any compulsion.
To assume miscegenation was common is contrary to the Victorian mores of the time, contrary to the ethnographic data as presented in the book, but compliant to abolitionists' treaties which formed the attitudes of the time and thereafter (even if excused by profit but remember, not a single authenticated case of breeding plantation or instructions suggesting so). I, too, have read about abuse of slave women but "Mandingo" and other paperback novels do not constitute historiography.
339. ScottLoar - Jan. 4, 1999 - 5:18 AM PT
It is telling that the most immediate, visceral images about slavery are of starvation, bloodletting whippings, and rape. It is these images which have the greatest emotional appeal, almost perverse in their power to hold constant attention. Yes, we've seen pictures of scarred backs and mulattoes but, how common was this in Southern society? Not much, if we're to accept the evidence collated by Time on the Cross which book was unknown to me more than a week ago and contrary to my suppositions about the conditions of slavery in the South.
340. Wombat - Jan. 4, 1999 - 12:34 PM PT
Niner:
It could be argued that some aspects of the Civil War are not yet over (some southern romanticists would agree with that). Considering that segregation (in a sense, the quid pro quo that the South was permitted in return for rejoining the Union) was formally ended in my lifetime, and the effects of it are still not satisfactorily resolved, we are still stuck with the Civil War's legacy.
I would also point out that much of the "celebration" of Confederate war heroes, and the addition of the Confederate battle flag to many southern state flags date from the 1950s, when this was perceived as defiance to the desegregationist trends in the rest of the US.
Ironically, given the many stated and perceived causes of the Civil War, the recent glorification of the Confederacy may well be more overtly racist than the attitudes that led to the Civil War itself.
341. davidtudor - Jan. 4, 1999 - 2:14 PM PT
109109's assertion that veneration of Southern war heroes demonstrates (well, shall we say, symbolizes?) reconciliation only works if this veneration occurs other than in the South. In at least this part of the North, I would say that at best there is a somewhat benign (read that as meaning mostly unthinking) respect for Lee, based on an image of his being a "gentleman" caught up in the War, a professional who happened to be from the South and therefore fought for the South. I would say that the same type of benign regard is given to most of the other Civil War military leaders, North or South.
Certainly not icons, as someone said above. (I must admit that until he mentioned it I never knew that Lee was also being celebrated on M.L.King Day.)
Wombat's comments that this relatively recent veneration of their war heroes in the South possibly really goes to being racist at its core seem right, to me at least.
342. Wombat - Jan. 4, 1999 - 2:24 PM PT
I know of no northern states that officially venerate Lee and Jackson, in tandem with Martin Luther King or otherwise.
343. ScottLoar - Jan. 4, 1999 - 2:26 PM PT
I cannot answer to veneration, which should be applied with miserly economy and only to the very few lest the word become cheapened, but respect? I've respect for Nathaniel Bedford Forrest who had sins aplenty but character and principle in fine. The only man on either side to enter as a common private and leave a general. And deservedly so.
344. Wombat - Jan. 4, 1999 - 2:41 PM PT
Scott:
Francis Barlow entered the US Army as a private and rose to general. He was a superb commander whose troops broke the Confederate line at Spotsylvania. Troops under his command also managed not to massacre surrendered prisoners as did Forrest's at Fort Pillow. Barlow also refrained from killing his fellow officers, unlike Forrest.
345. ScottLoar - Jan. 4, 1999 - 2:46 PM PT
Tell me more about Barlow; I know nothing. And Forrest's massacre at Fort Pillow was calculated, not excusable, but calculated as a lesson for others who might be so inclined.
I wonder how many know of Fort Pillow?
346. Wombat - Jan. 4, 1999 - 2:58 PM PT
Thomas Buell writes admiringly about Barlow (and G. Thomas) in a recent book comparing several Union and Confederate generals (I don't remember its title.)
Barlow was a staunch abolitionist lawyer who joined the New York militia as a private. He found his calling as a soldier and rapidly rose to command first a regiment, then a brigade. He fought at Antietam, Gettysburg (badly wounded), the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and the final battles in pursuit of Lee.
If--as you say--the Fort Pillow massacre was deliberate, then Forrest should have been executed. There is (was) a fine line line between Forrest's savagery and "Bloody Bill" Quantrill's (Lawrence, Kansas massacre, where the victims were white). It appears that Forrest crossed it. No amount of tactical brilliance can excuse that sort of thing.
347. ScottLoar - Jan. 4, 1999 - 3:06 PM PT
Wombat, the very subject of Forrest defines us, you and me. I respect the man, sins and all. I don't excuse him, I respect him. And what if the victims in Lawrence of Quantrill's Raiders were all white? Does that make massacre more palatable?
348. lazygeorge - Jan. 4, 1999 - 3:58 PM PT
Buell's book is called, The Warrior Generals. I thought Forrest denied ordering the massacre, but I also think he denied his links to the Klan. As for reconciliation in Virginia, Thomas is once again recognized as a Virginian.
349. lazygeorge - Jan. 4, 1999 - 4:02 PM PT
Barlow became a lieutenant after two weeks in the Army.
350. ScottLoar - Jan. 4, 1999 - 4:08 PM PT
Christ! I spent 2 1/2 years in the Army and never rose above Spec 5. Barlow had friends? And I mean so not fecitiously, as company officers were regularly recommended for commission by popular approval.
351. Wombat - Jan. 4, 1999 - 6:30 PM PT
Scott:
Absolutely not! I suspect there was far more of a fuss over the Lawrence massacre than Fort Pillow. And I guarantee that Quantrill would have been hung by Federal authorities had he not already been killed (under dubious circumstances).
Lazy:
Thanks for remembering the title. Promotion happens very quickly when there is not much of an army to begin with.
352. arkymalarky - Jan. 4, 1999 - 7:58 PM PT
My family are Southerners as far back as I know. My husband's family owned one of the largest plantations in the county, and it's still a sizeable estate. But I can't say I respect Lee and others, who made the decision to abandon the nation in defense of an indefensible institution. Lee was a fine man in a number of ways as were many of our American leaders who owned slaves and supported states rights, but I do not believe Southern states should set aside a commemorative holiday to honor him. The Southern state governments now represent both blacks and whites, and I don't think they should officially honor a war which they fought to keep ancestors of some of their citizens enslaved. Martin Luther King stood up honorably for what was right. Robert E. Lee stood up honorably for what was wrong.
Scott,
As far as miscegenation, my biggest question about the data provided in the book is how reliable such a count could be. What would compel planters to provide an accurate count of mulatto slaves? I live in a well-integrated community in which it is obvious that more than one to two percent of blacks have some amount of white blood. Mary Chestnut, whose accounts of the antebellum South and the war are very reasonable, also makes note of miscegenation in her diary, and I think the direct accounts of the whites in the planter class are significant, though I realize it doesn't speak to how widespread the practice was.
353. arkymalarky - Jan. 4, 1999 - 8:27 PM PT
I don't think I made my question clear. I was wondering if you could give more info on the data. I wasn't clear on when it was gathered, how, etc. I also understand that other factors than the modern population are relevant in determining the extent of the practice. I would just like more explanation on how they arrived at the percent figure, if you have it.
354. lazygeorge - Jan. 5, 1999 - 4:48 AM PT
Yes, Barlow had connections, but so did almost everyone else including Grant. The Illinois Congressional Delegation pushed for Grant. Only George Henry Thomas, a Virginian, lacked political support.
I knew lots of black officers and NCOs who were fans of Nathan Bedford Forrest.
355. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 5, 1999 - 6:37 AM PT
cellardweller (Message #203)
"It's not how slavery would have 'come to an end' that interests me, or any other African-American. It's the *fact* of slavery and its *effect* on this society that's at issue."
Who cares what interests you! The topic was Fogel and Engerman's book on the historical economics of slavery, on which you ignorantly commented. And now you're pretending that your interest had been elsewhere. Furthermore, the topic of this thread is HISTORY, most definitely and resoundingly NOT the effect of slavery on modern American society. Why don't you scamper along to one of the several hack political threads where the turds of interjection and dunce provocations that you try to pass off as bravely unpopular satirical observations are just the right balance to the right-wing blather?
356. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 5, 1999 - 6:38 AM PT
Hanspragma (Message #314)
Your argument is ahistorical. The southern economy was as much based on contract and exchange as the northern economy. Slaves were not considered human beings but capital assets, so you cannot cite slave labour as evidence of a "society founded on status".
357. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 5, 1999 - 6:41 AM PT
Message #337
You may very well be a dubious character, but I am certain that what you were being is doubtful or skeptical.
Message #336
"From the several autobiographies, and other narrative sources I have read, their diet was much more restrictive -- at least not as varied nor as plentiful."
As someone once said, the plural of anecdote isn't data.
"The report you cite compared a slaves' diet with that of a freeman living in 1876, and I thought that might be misleading considering the economic climate of 1876."
Fogel and Engerman compare the slave's diet with that of a freeman living in 1879, not 1876. 1879 was of course the beginning of a long boom.
358. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 5, 1999 - 6:47 AM PT
Message #352, re miscegenation
Fogel and Engerman base much of their conclusions about the issue on the combination of the following evidence:
• the 1860 census
• the fact that not every mulatto was the product of a union between a white owner and a black woman, but was frequently the product a mulatto union or a union between blacks and mulattoes. (Legally, anybody who was an eighth black was called a mulatto, though in Brazil, where racialist punctilios were taken to the extreme, they were called 'octoroons.)
• a demographic growth model of the slave population which casts doubt that on a simple arithmetical basis that a large proportion of slave children must have been sired by white owners.
• the work of population geneticists
359. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 5, 1999 - 6:50 AM PT
The second volume of Fogel and Engerman's book, which is now out-of-print, discusses all the technical methodological issues, including econometric specifications and demographic growth models. It's well nigh unreadable by most people.
360. arkymalarky - Jan. 5, 1999 - 6:52 AM PT
"...but I am
certain that what you were being is doubtful or skeptical."
Right, PE. That's exactly what definition #2 states in my handy Webster's.
361. arkymalarky - Jan. 5, 1999 - 6:54 AM PT
Thanks, PE, for #358.
362. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 5, 1999 - 6:59 AM PT
PD: What is the source for your comments in Message #101 & #102? Was there legislative action to decrease the importation of indentured servants in favour of African slaves? If not, on what basis do you imply there was a conscious collective action by southern property owners to "supplant the white laboring force with an enslaved black labor force" in order to "buttress and protect the social order of the plantation South"?
I find the notion of "masses of vagabonds" in late 17th century southern colonies wholly unbelievable. What was the population of Virginia in 1700? 20,000? 80,000? Your historicising is too pat and implausible a priori, like some of the class-struggle-based Marxist histories one reads now and then.
And if there was no such conscious action, it seems to me that the profitability of slavery is the best answer to why the slave population expanded: indentured servants went free eventually, they were not as easily controlled as African slaves, and they frequently escaped to become farmers or trappers or homesteaders. In short, they were not reliable enough as a permanent labour force.
In addition, I dispute your English history. Some 700,000 people emigrated from England in the 17th century, but this represented either a free movement or a transportation of criminals abroad. There was never any parliamentary programme to rid the country of its vagabonds and dump them in America. England didn't offer any "solution". The "solution" just happened.
363. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 5, 1999 - 7:11 AM PT
the village idiot going by the name of toones (Message #265)
"I accused PE of being a racist once, and he essentially admitted that he was. He said he didn't like anything about Native Americans and said he just felt that way, he couldn't help it."
I said I hold not the slightest interest in Native American cultures, but then I hold not the slightest interest in the culture of Icelanders, Filipinos, or Afrikaaners. (Afrikaners are white South Africans of Dutch origin, which fact I mention given your truly frightening capacity to combine hallucination and ignorance.) If this is tantamount to admitting that I am a racist, then you're an idiot. But everyone already knew that.
Have people noticed Toonces's babble about "Hindus" polluting the Ganges with their defecation? How Sikhs "look" Muslim? How the Chinese and "thus" the Native Americans are genetically more predisposed to cooperation than other cultures? Have people read some of the candidly hateful talk about Israelis and Jews that Toonces has posted in the Israel/Palestine thread? There, she has taken to mocking Israelis caught in the aftermath of a suicide bombing as "assholes" and "uniformed jackasses strutting around, bumping into each other".
If there is a racist among us, Toonces the Stalking Schizophrenic Psycho is it. She's got a truly frightening capacity for demonising whole peoples.
By the way, the brief exchange about Native Americans can actually be read in the Fray Archives. See #121, 135 and 137 in particular. (Toonces = Bombolurina = AzureNW)
364. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 5, 1999 - 7:16 AM PT
Loar (Message #15) to Glendajean's Message #10: "Your comments on the US Civil War concerning same language, same God, same heroes, could apply to many other nations' civil war, such as the civil war in England which deposed Charles I, that in Japan by which the Meiji was established, the Spanish civil war of the 30's...."
Well, in the case of the Spanish Civil War, one could conceivably argue that the two sides had little in common. Whereas the Nationalists fought in cahoots with the Catholic Church, the Spanish Republic was dominated by atheists and secularists. Non-Castilian elements, especially Catalonians and Basques, were heavily represented among Republican ranks. Moreover, the heroes of the Spanish Republic were people like Marx, Bakhunin, Karl Kautsky and, for some, Lenin. I doubt portraits of Philip II and Olivares hung in too many Republican offices.
365. lowlife - Jan. 5, 1999 - 7:59 AM PT
Anyone read Gore Vidal's "Lincoln."
366. ScottLoar - Jan. 5, 1999 - 8:47 AM PT
Arkymalarky, I doubt researchers will find planters' notes to the effect that "I made 3 last night", or some secret ciphers which once decoded reveal sexual activity similar to S. Pepys' diaries. I can quote from the text but you've got the summary contained by Message #358.
Pseudoerasmus, the example of the Spanish Civil War was handy, but I'm sure despite a rigorous examination my point was still well made.
367. arkymalarky - Jan. 5, 1999 - 9:00 AM PT
I figure you knew that wasn't what I was asking. I was asking about the census count and whether that was used and what other data may have been used to support the percent figure you posted. PE gave me exactly the info I was looking for.
368. davidtudor - Jan. 5, 1999 - 9:04 AM PT
Arky - I found your Message #352 to be both sound and eloquent.
369. tmachine - Jan. 5, 1999 - 12:30 PM PT
pe: my understanding of the impetus behind importing slaves, at least in the 17th century, was not just that they were cheaper and easier to control, but that without them there was simply not enough manpower. There was a huge labor gap in America for at least a century. Even, I think, with (probably) higher pay and more prospects than might be available in the Old World, landowners simply couldn't get people to come to the colonies fast enough to do the kind of labor-intensive work that plantations demanded. So they enslaved them instead.
370. arkymalarky - Jan. 5, 1999 - 2:37 PM PT
Thank you, David.
371. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 5, 1999 - 3:42 PM PT
Message #369: Well, that would have been my guess too, but then PD had been saying something completely different.
372. tmachine - Jan. 5, 1999 - 3:55 PM PT
pe: I realize that. And I think your disagreement is well founded. In most of these kind of situations, economic necessity (in the sense of wanting a maximally cheap workforce) comes before social window dressing. Although it seems believable that once the slaves were there, justifications about class, intelligence, color and everything else would arise to shore up the owners' status.
373. ScottLoar - Jan. 5, 1999 - 4:31 PM PT
Arkymalarky, if "PE" gave you exactly the information you needed then excuse my post to you and do not, do not, ask me for information again.
374. arkymalarky - Jan. 5, 1999 - 5:03 PM PT
"...then excuse my post to you...."
Excuse my response if I misread the tone of your Message #366, but it seemed at the time I read it to be making fun of my question.
375. lemwalker - Jan. 5, 1999 - 5:37 PM PT
This has nothing to do with the current conversation. Of which #363 is a jewel....
In Bremerton Washington there is a cemetery. Within the confines of this cemetery is a walled enclosure for members of the GAR. These gentlemen died in the first two decades of this century. The headstones I remember are from Indiana, New York, Illinois, Tennessee, Michigan. At the time of the civil war this area was hardly settled. After becoming veterans they became pioneers. They elected congressmen, senators, govenors, and presidents for 40 years after the civil war. It is all their fault
376. ScottLoar - Jan. 5, 1999 - 6:07 PM PT
Arkymalarky, no, I wasn't making fun of your question just as I do not make fun of any question posed in earnest, nor do I like my own enquiries mocked or lightly dismissed. Pretentious assumption, yeah, fair target. Now, we're both back to where we started, i.e. civil discourse.
377. arkymalarky - Jan. 5, 1999 - 6:12 PM PT
I just heard for the first time on PBS an advertisement for a state map of Arkansas Civil War battle sites, cemeteries, and other places of interest in AR relating to the CW. I called and will be receiving a copy within ten days.
378. arkymalarky - Jan. 5, 1999 - 6:17 PM PT
I really appreciate that, Scott. I'm very glad, as you're contributing a great deal of interest to the topic.
379. phillipdavid - Jan. 5, 1999 - 7:41 PM PT
pseudoerasmus,
Message #362
Madison and Jefferson coressponded quite a bit about the problems associated with a high degree of populousness. As Madison said, "A certain degree of misery seems inseperable from a high degre of populousness." Let me explain the situation in Virginia that will illustrate the *Social* benefits of slavery. The economic benefits are undeniable, but the social benefits may have been even more important at the time.
"Masses of vagabonds in late 17th century southern colonies" were a reality; the population grew in geometric proportions as the diseases which killed off large numbers of early servants abated after the 1640s. Yet the rapid rise in population brought trouble in Virginia. The tidewater land was engrossed by speculators who recognized its value would rise, which made it very difficult for freemen to find their place in society. Many of them worked for wages and scraped by on the dangerous fronteir, living a hand-to-mouth existence. In 1676 America, it is estimated that one fourth of Virginia's freemen were without land of their own; in the same year, a memeber of Virginia's govenor's council explained the term freemen to mean "persons without house or land," implying that this was the normal condition of servants who had attained their freedom.
And these men looked very dangerous and frightening to Virginia's upper crust. They squatted, dodged taxes, drank, quarelled, stole and enticed servants to run away with them. They were predominantly young, single men with a rebelious spirit. And they were armed -- they had to be. Life in Virginia required guns. Planataion life was exposed to attacks by Indians on land and from privateers and pirates by sea. And whenever England was at war with the Dutch or French, the settlers had to be ready to defend themselves. (The Dutch sailed up the James River in 1667 and again in 1673 and captured over 30 merchant ships, as well as the E
380. phillipdavid - Jan. 5, 1999 - 7:44 PM PT
as the English warship that suppposed to be defending them). On these ocassions, Virginia's Govenor Berkely armed the planters and gathered them to prevent the enemy from landing. But while he stood off the Dutch, he also worried about the ragged crew at his back. Of the able-bodied men in the colony he estimated that "at leat one third are Single freemen (whose Labor will hardly maintaine them) or men much in debt, both which we may reasonably expect upon any Small advantage the Enemy may gaine upon us, would revolt to them in hopes of bettering their Condition by Shattering the Plunder of the Country with them." (Edmund Morgan,"Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox", _Journal of American History_,1972-73, p.589).
And as I reported before, these fears were justified. Three years after the Dutch attack mentioned above, rebellion swept Virginia. Bacon's rebellion saw the largest popular uprising in the coloies before the Revolution, engaged in by the men Virginia's govenor and his upper crust friends characterized as "rabble." And it turned out that there were rabble everywhere! Berkely understandably raised his estimates of their numbers : "How miserable that man is," he exclaimed, " that Governs a People wher six parts in seven at least are Poore Endebted Discontented and Armed." (Morgan, p.589)
That rebellion, and others like it (although smaller) was a shattering experience for the upper crust. They even refused to establish buffer setllements along the upper reaches of the rivers to protect against Indian raids because they were afraid of assembling 50 or more men with guns -- they were afraid of more wild bachelors who would turn to plundering them once again. This nervousness increased and continued through the rest of the century, spurred by a new wave of tobacco-cutting riots in which men moved about destroying crops in the fields, desperate to produce a shortage in hopes of raising prices
381. phillipdavid - Jan. 5, 1999 - 7:46 PM PT
for the leaf. Nearby Maryland and North Carolina also experienced such tumults.
Virginia attempted to deal with the problems of poverty and discontent (i.e, rebellions and plunder) by restricting the liberties of those who did not have (as Morgan says) the proper badge of freedom, namely the property the government was supposed to protect. Numerous measures were enacted that lengthened the terms of service of servants, for example. But the ranks of freedmen continued to grow, and so did poverty and discontent. Virginia's assembley in 1670 even limited voting to landholders. But that did not disenfranchise these disconted masses from their weapons -- which they weilded so effectively under Nathianal Bacon -- and it is very questionable how long Virginia could have continued along this course, meeting discontent with repression, and manning her plantations with men who would eventually swell the ranks of the unruly, dangerous discontented.
The obvious solution was for the upper crust to let go of some of the land they had engrossed. The English governemnt even attempted to break up the great landholdings which had helped create this problem. But they did not have to, as another solution was available which allowed the magnates to keep their lands, yet arrested the discontent and the repression of other Englishmen. Enslave the Africans. This solution would strengthen the rights of Englishmen and nourish their attachment to liberty which came to fruition in the Revolutionary generation of Virginian statesmen.
This decision was probably not a conscious one -- Morgan doesn't think so, neither do other historians I have read. It came without a decision, as Virginians bought the cheapest labor they could get. But I am proposing that the social benefits of an enslaved labor force, even if not consciously recognized at the time by the men who bought the slaves, were larger than the economic ones. The increase in the importation of slaves was matched by a
382. phillipdavid - Jan. 5, 1999 - 7:49 PM PT
by a decrease in the importation of indentured servants and consequently a decrease in the number of dangerous new freedmen who annually emerged seeking a place in society they would most likely be unable to achieve.
If Africans would have been unavailable, it may have been impossible to devise a way to keep a continuing supply of English immigrants in their place. There was a limit beyond which the abridgement of English liberties would have resulted in not only in rebellion but in protests from England and in the cuting off of the supply of further servants. At the time of Bacon's Rebellion the English commission of investigation had shown more sympathy with the rebels than with the well-to-do planters who had engrossed Virginia's lands. To have attempted the enslavement of of English laborers would have caused more disorder than it cured. But to keep black men as slaves was possible and apparently regarded as plain common sense.
Afterward, the threat and danger of a slave insurrection actually proved to be less than that which the colony had faced from its restive and armed freedmen. Slaves had none of the rising expectations that so often produce human discontent.Noone had told them they had rights, and they were less troubled by the sexual imbalance that helped make Virginia's free laborers so restless. Slaves could be held own in ways that would have not have been considered reasonable, convienient, or even safe, if applied to Englishmen. Slaves could be deprived opportunities of association and rebellion. They could be kept unarmed and unorganized, subject to severe punishments by their owners without fear of legal reprisals. It is not surprising that no slave rebellion even approached Bacon's Rebellion in its extent or sucess.
Nor is it surprising that Virginia's freedmen never again posed a threat to society. With numbers reduced, competition was less, and they could more easily find a place in society.
That is a summary of the S
383. phillipdavid - Jan. 5, 1999 - 7:50 PM PT
That is a summary of the SOCIAL benefits of slavery -- very compelling benefits, imo.
384. CalGal - Jan. 5, 1999 - 9:46 PM PT
Seguine,
Message #284
"BTW, I did once meet a guy who hailed from your world. A refugee, actually; he looked surprisingly like Billy Mumy. And he told me that the name for your planet translates into English as 'the plane of conveniently malleable semantics'."
Ah, no. You mention later that he smokes; clearly your education on our ways has been neglected. The Mumy-fied Man was, alas, a fraud.
There is, in fact, no one name for my planet. A defining attribute of this world is our enjoyment of a fluid and ever-changing reality; naming the planet would needlessly limit our ability to embrace and reform the neverending chaos that provides us such endless enjoyment.
385. stostosto - Jan. 6, 1999 - 4:05 AM PT
pd
Great posts, there.
386. ScottLoar - Jan. 6, 1999 - 4:55 AM PT
Phillipdavid, your series of posts was very well done, as good as any that have appeared, and well appreciated. Very good work.
387. lowlife - Jan. 6, 1999 - 7:22 AM PT
anyone read gore vidal's "lincoln"
388. Wombat - Jan. 6, 1999 - 7:28 AM PT
Yes.
389. ScottLoar - Jan. 6, 1999 - 7:41 AM PT
No.
390. CalGal - Jan. 6, 1999 - 9:42 AM PT
Thread Archives.
I thought it would be worth getting this out early, since there has been a great deal of information in this thread.
I split out some of the topics into their own page. I have some other topics that seem to constitute a page of their own, but I haven't figured out what to name them yet. If anyone sees something that they think warrants a separate page, let me know.
The synopsys of Time on the Cross has its own page; I combined some of the posts to make these easier to read.
I also took any book reference that I saw and created a Bibliography page. While it might be easier to read if I just included the titles, I thought it would be more appropriate to include the entire post in which the book was mentioned.
The sequential pages contain all the posts in the thread.
Christi--there are, as Niner pointed out, several mentions of the cotton gin. Just do a "find" in the sequential pages.
391. ScottLoar - Jan. 6, 1999 - 3:32 PM PT
CalGal, good editing, although my definition of civil war at the very onset of this thread was not included, a definition of economy, beauty, and never challenged. A very good definition, one worthy of repeat.
392. CalGal - Jan. 6, 1999 - 3:34 PM PT
Scott,
I believe it is on Page 1, is it not?
393. pseudoerasmus - Jan. 6, 1999 - 4:02 PM PT
Loar: I don't mean to offend, so don't take this adversarially. I thought your response in Message #5 to Glendajean's Message #2 was less an answer to the question posed, less a definition, than a reiteration of the question without a question mark.
394. Hanspragma - Jan. 6, 1999 - 6:15 PM PT
My message #314 suggested that the reason free and slave labor were incompatible was that they are tokens of two different types of society -- contractual in the one case, status-bound in the other. In #356, PE disputes this, because the slaveholders thought of slaves as capital investments, not as people, and so didn't think of them as having any "status" at all -- in contrast to European serfs.
I will stubbornly stick by my theory. Furthermore, I will refer interested persons to SLAVERY DEFENDED: THE VIEWS OF THE OLD SOUTH. This is a collection of pre-war writings, edited in 1962 by Eric L. McKitrick. It shows a range of argumentation in favor of slavery, but one major theme was that the system was more compassionate to the laborers than the wage-labor alternative. This argument presumes that the laborers in question WERE regarded as people on some level, does it not? The problem was, they were regarded paternalistically, as people who had to be taken care of. They were not considered fit for contractual relations, one might say. Wage labor would be above their status. Which gets us back to my point. The effort to extinquish status-based thinking is an ongoing one here in 1999.
395. Seguine - Jan. 6, 1999 - 6:31 PM PT
"The effort to extinquish status-based thinking is an ongoing one here in 1999."
Could you please cite some examples of what you take to be present day "status-based" thinking?
396. Hanspragma - Jan. 6, 1999 - 6:48 PM PT
CalGal, Good bibliography, but you left out the Simpson book to which I believe I referred several times when the postings were in the double digits. For the sake of completeness, then, here is a full citation -- Brooks D. Simpson, THE RECONSTRUCTION PRESIDENTS, University Press of Kansas, 1998.
Seguine, every time I hear people use an expression like "Clinton is doing a good job running the country" my teeth chatter. Not because I disagree with what the people who say that mean to say, but because of the phrase "running the country." If we think of ourselves in contractual/free-society terms, no one person runs the country. The government is the servant, and Clinton only "runs" the executive branch of the federal level of that servant. But phrases like that, not to get tedious with too many examples, do indicate to me that we do still have status-based thinking about in 1999.
397. ScottLoar - Jan. 6, 1999 - 7:29 PM PT
Pseudoerasmus, with keen appreciation for your pains not to give offense I must yet confess I don't know what the hell you're talking about.
398. phillipdavid - Jan. 6, 1999 - 8:06 PM PT
CalGal,
For the Bibliography:
A primary source for my posts about the social benefits of slavery in pre-Revolutionary America is an essay by Edmund S. Morgan, "Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox".
The points I made are just part of a larger provacative argument that Morgan makes: American freedom could not have existed without American slavery; the two systems were symbiotic rather than antagonistic.
I would encourage those interested in colonial and Revolutionary America to look into the writings of Edmund Sears Morgan. He is perhaps best known for his opposition to the position of "progressive" historians (e.g., Arthur M. Schlesinger) who argued early in the 20th century the primacy of economic self interest in the American Revolution; Morgan argued that most Americans of the Revolutionary era shared the same basic political principles, that the rhetoric of the Revoution could not be dismissed as propaganda -- as Schlesinger had claimed-- but should be taken seriously as a motivating force behind the movement.
My own view is that everyone has economic interests, and everyone has an ideology. Only by exploring the relationships between the two can historians hope to fully understand either.
399. arkymalarky - Jan. 6, 1999 - 8:23 PM PT
I've really been enjoying your posts, too, PD. Yours and Scott's both have really provided interesting perspectives of Southern slavery that I might not have encountered without this forum. I'm glad Cal is doing a bibliography.
400. ScottLoar - Jan. 7, 1999 - 2:37 AM PT
Phillipdavid, I too never subscribed to historical materialism as an accurate interpretation of history.