"1776 and abolition of slavery" Topic

Au pas de Charge said:"They were in a sense, the Drug Lords of their era."

Dn Jackson: A poor analogy, in my opinion.

Then, I suppose it's fortunate that, on this matter, your opinion doesn't carry any weight with me.

Dn Jackson: Prior to the 18th century slavery was an accept part of life the world over.

Not to slaves.

Dn Jackson: Perfectly legal and moral.

It was only legal because the people who wanted slaves made sure it was legal and also wouldnt sign the DOI if they felt slavery was criticized or if there was even a hint of abolishing it.

Remember this?:

Dn Jackson: One thing that is often overlooked in discussions such as this is that many southerners recognized that they were riding a tiger when it came to slavery. It was evil, and detrimental to the country, but the economy was so dependent on it that they couldn't figure out how to end it.

Then you said this:

Dn Jackson: I don't think lucrative is the right word. It was necessary. The economy was so intertwined with slavery that the effects of emancipation were seen as potentially devastating.

Which is it, do you think the slave owners knew it was immoral or not? Was it lucrative or not? Or does the answer change according to either expediency or memory?

Ultimately I dont understand what you mean. Do you mean if something is legal it is moral? Or do you mean if something is legal it cannot be called immoral?

And… they knew it was not moral.

Dn Jackson: It was only with the Age of Enlightenment that western civilization decided it was wrong morally and should be ended.

Umm, this was the age of Enlightenment.

Dn Jackson: It was legal until 1865 here,

Right, because the Slave owners were like drug lords and held on to it long after they firmly knew it was immoral because they were making lots of money.

Dn Jackson: …and continued to be legal in other places through most of the 20th century.

Who cares and what does this have to do with the USA? Do we follow the international lowest common denominator?

Dn Jackson: Drug dealers are selling an illegal product.

Although that wasn't the gist of the original analogy, would it be alright to you if drug dealers pushed legalized drugs on children? Do we really think the only line that makes a drug dealer a drug dealer is whether a drug is currently illegal?

Au pas de Charge: And yes, they probably believed that because Jefferson didn't free his own slaves, they were free to keep theirs. It makes perfect sense, why should I give up my slaves, if no one else does first? What a brilliant observation of their self indulgent immaturity."

Dn Jackson: I've never heard an argument that Jefferson was held up as an example in favor of slavery. Others had already given up slavery in the northern colonies, but the difference in the economies of the northern colonies compared to the southern ones meant it was much easier to do there.

I am not making this argument. I was responding to what you said. Do you remember this?:

Dn Jackson: One thing that is often overlooked in discussions such as this is that many southerners recognized that they were riding a tiger when it came to slavery. It was evil, and detrimental to the country, but the economy was so dependent on it that they couldn't figure out how to end it. After all, Jefferson wrote the passage quoted above but never freed his own slaves because if he had it would have ruined him financially.

Please keep my answer in the context that you underlined Jefferson's hypocrisy around slavery and it led to the suggestion that no one else should free their slaves unless Jefferson freed them first.

This is all from memory so I stand ready to be corrected.

I understand your concern over memory

Except to some extent it WAS accepted by slaves. That is the argument of Genovese in ROLL JORDAN ROLL: THE WORLD THE SLAVES MADE. Slave revolts in North America was very rare, in comparison to Latin America where they were frequent. There are various reasons for that. But Genovese (drawing on slave narratives) explains that slaves in the US mostly accepted their status but were willing and to a surprising extent able to impose their own notions of how they should be treated. (That is the key aspect of feudalism: no pretense of equality, but mutual and reciprocal obligations.) Slaves believed they were ENTITLED to certain treatment, and planters mostly agreed. Moral suasion and economic interest combined. That is, the CONDITIONS of life on the plantations were heavily influenced by the black women who nursed and raised planters, and also by the threat of a work slowdown at harvest time etc. Genovese's work is not unchallenged, but RJR is, I believe, still the best single book on slavery in the US.

Of course planters had cause to exaggerate how kind and gentle they were, just as abolitionists had cause to exaggerate suffering and cruelty. It is a spectrum, and very hard to know where the "norm" or middle was.

Lay two unquestioned but seemingly inconsistent facts side by side: slaves remained obedient on the plantations throughout the war, when most white men were away with the army. AND slaves were jubilant to be freed. If the plantations were concentration camps, prisons of the worst sort, the Confederacy could not have survived a year. It is COMPLICATED.

Countdown to someone saying I am excusing slavery: 10, 9, 8, 7 . . .

@doc mcb

There are far too many context errors on here. Kindly keep the statement in context.

DN Jackson said: Prior to the 18th century slavery was an accept part of life the world over.

I said:

Not to slaves.

Now you say:

Except to some extent it WAS accepted by slaves.

Putting the contention aside that by your own admission it is some alleged sub part of slaves, and that this theory is made by some crackpot author and that revolution was taking place commonly worldwide and less commonly in the USA and, further putting aside that slaves didn't vote for slavery, that slaves cannot consent to be slaves any more than a person can consent to sell their body parts and so many other issues with your assertion…putting all this aside, I have to inform you that it looks like your pedantic correction is a deliberate attempt to rehabilitate DN Jackson's blithering statement that everyone, master, slave and everyone was OK with slavery and that slavery was per se taken as a social fait accompli. Is this your intent?

Because if it was, and you dont want to be seen as excusing slavery, what exactly is your hope and dream here?

You seem to have picked the least important point above. Why would that be? Why not latch on to some of the other pearls popped out above?

Except to some extent it WAS accepted by slaves.

Are we now reverting to the 'happy slave' 'theory'?

The existence and use of the Underground Railroad tends to negate the idea that slaves accepted their fate.

And the numbers of former and escaped slaves that flocked to join the Union Army definitely negates the idea.

And the combat record of the black regiments in the Civil War impressed the War Department so that they added four of them (two cavalry and two infantry) to the postwar regular army. The idea was originally six, but two of the infantry regiments were not activated.

Charge, As expected. And if you consider Eugene Genovese some "crackpot author" -- he was the preeminant historian of slavery -- then you are simply not entitled to an opinion on any of this, because you have not done your homework of reading the acknowledged canon on the subject. Drive-by commenting is not worth considering.

Kevin: As to black actions in the war, of course what you mention is correct, but sometimes the key thing is what did NOT happen: slave revolts when they might actually have succeeded. Many plantations had NO white men present; all were in the army. I SAID slaves were jubilant when freedom arrived, and that would carry over into flocking to join the Union army. You are deflecting from my point rahter than confronting it.

No, we are not reverting in any "happy slave" theory, which you would know if you had read what I posted and reflected on it. You win the count-down.

In his best-known book, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1974), Genovese examined the society of the slaves. This book won the Bancroft Prize in 1975. Genovese viewed the antebellum South as a closed and organically united paternalist society that exploited and attempted to dehumanize the slaves. Genovese paid close attention to the role of religion as a form of resistance in the daily life of the slaves, because slaves used it to claim a sense of humanity. He redefined resistance to slavery as all efforts by which slaves rejected their status as slaves, including their religion, music, and the culture they built, as well as work slowdowns, periodic disappearances, and escapes and open rebellions.[13]

Genovese applied Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony to the slave South. As Dennis Dworkin expresses it, "Like [E.P.] Thompson… Genovese deployed Gramsci's ideas. For Genovese, the slaveholding society of the Old South was rooted in exploitative class relationships, but most important was the cultural hegemony of slaveholders, their paternalistic ideology establishing both the potential and limits for a semiautonomous slave culture of resistance."[14]

Genovese placed paternalism at the center of the master-slave relationship. Both masters and slaves embraced paternalism but for different reasons and with varying notions of what paternalism meant. For the slaveowners, paternalism allowed them to think of themselves as benevolent and to justify their appropriation of their slaves' labor. Paternalist ideology, they believed, also gave the institution of slavery a more benign face and helped deflate the increasingly strong abolitionist critique of the institution. Slaves, on the other hand, recognized that paternalist ideology could be twisted to suit their own ends by providing them with improved living and working conditions. Slaves struggled mightily to convert the benevolent "gifts" or "privileges" bestowed upon them by their masters into customary rights that masters would not violate. The reciprocity of paternalism could work to the slaves' advantage by allowing them to demand more humane treatment from their masters. Religion was an important theme in Roll, Jordan, Roll and other studies. Genovese noted that Evangelicals recognized slavery as the root of Southern ills and sought some reforms, but from the early decades of the early nineteenth century, they abandoned arguing for abolition or substantial change of the system. Genovese's contention was that after 1830, southern Christianity became part of social control of the slaves. He also argued that the slaves' religion was not conducive to millenarianism or a revolutionary political tradition. Rather, it helped them survive and resist.[15]

The nature of plantation slavery is a huge, complex, and controversial topic. Genovese's work is part of a much larger debate. But anyone who dismisses him as a "crackpot author" has disqualified himself from further consideration.

"Happy slaves" my ass.

But anyone who dismisses him as a "crackpot author" has disqualified himself from further consideration.

Except that you stuck your nose in in response to DN Jackson who didn't say that slavery was complex (as you put it) but rather that there wasn't a single solitary issue with slavery from or by anyone. In reality, you rehabilitated his argument and now you also own it.

Genovese's work is part of a much larger debate. But anyone who dismisses him as a "crackpot author" has disqualified himself from further consideration.

Did you get your blurbs from here?:

link

Genovese stated, "Those of you who know me know that I am a Marxist and a Socialist. Therefore, unlike most of my distinguished colleagues here this morning, I do not fear or regret the impending Viet Cong victory in Vietnam. I welcome it."

In the 1960s, Genovese in his Marxist stage depicted the masters of the slaves as part of a "seigneurial" society that was anti-modern, pre-bourgeois and pre-capitalist.

Did I say crackpot? I meant Marxist crackpot. This isnt education, it's indoctrination!

Dear Lord, Wikipedia? You face the Wrath of Kevin for that!

link

1975 Bancroft Prize.

I understand that in Mexico, Genovese is still known as el marxisto loco.

No, I think they know that he converted to Roman Catholicism and became a conservative. Sorry, Charge, for a while I was trying to take you seriously. My mistake.

Genovese published Roll Jordan Roll in 1974.
"He remained a Marxist thinker until the 80's.".
link
Same Wikipedia article, but no mention of Lucchese or Gambino.

Yes, his interpretation in RJR is marxist. He saw Southern plantation society as pre-modern, essentially feudal. (DeToqueville saw it the same way, predicting the war in the 1830s and that the democratic north would win.)

I heard Genovese speak at UVa in 1973. Among many other things, he said (in answeer to a question) that the only magazine he routinely read cover-to-cover was Bill Buckley's NATIONAL REVIEW. ("I don't agree with their conclusions, but they are asking the right questions.") So I was gratified but not surprised to learn that he had become a conservative. The radical Left sees the flaws of liberalism as clearly as we conservatives do, though from the opposite direction.

Sorry, Charge, for a while I was trying to take you seriously. My mistake.

Please think nothing of it. Others have not taken me seriously, generally to their peril.

Now, you dont like being viewed as a proponent of Brechtel's coined "Happy Slave" theory but out of all the things DN Jackson said above, I didnt see you take issue with any one of them. Can we infer (2nd time I am asking) that you support his positions? I ask because you seemed to think the only bit worth spending time on was proving that some slaves were happy ( apparently, in order to prove that, at the time, slavery was acceptable to everyone); mostly by flinging a book at us that won a prize in 1975. Maybe in 1861, Jeff Davis would've made Genovese VP of the Confederacy. Do you really think just because it's in print and you like it, it becomes controlling authority?

Exactly what points are you trying to make, what are you protecting and propping up? And then, you want everyone to take your say-so as the final word on the matter? I have to inform you, that you are the one making the sensational assertion.

Your sentences are riddled with self-awareness that you are making a sensational and rather desperate counter-condemnational defense of southern slavery. So desperate that you have to cite a 50 year old book written by an ideological fanatic.

Even worse, when I joked about Genovese being a Marxist, instead of picking up on how too many on here call good universities and their professors Marxists to dismiss them, you took me dead seriously…at least about the Marxist part. Interesting. maybe the definition of a Marxist on here is anyone someone finds inconvenient or disagrees with, whereas an actual Marxist that one agrees with is a mighty fine fellow.

In any case, I cant help it if your analytic abilities are so flawed so as to be ridiculous.

Look at this one from you:

Lay two unquestioned but seemingly inconsistent facts side by side: slaves remained obedient on the plantations throughout the war, when most white men were away with the army. AND slaves were jubilant to be freed. If the plantations were concentration camps, prisons of the worst sort, the Confederacy could not have survived a year. It is COMPLICATED.

What are we to take away from this? Were there any large or effective concentration camp uprisings? We're they happy too?

What makes you think a lack of uprisings indicates happy participation? Maybe the mental degradation was so thorough so as to erase any sense of hope from the victims.

Also, why do you sometimes think the exception proves the rule and then, suddenly, assert that the exception disapproves the rules?

I would almost think this was an attempt to win a debate at all costs employing various stratagems but that cant be the case because you've asserted you believe in the one truth, and not one crafted by propagandists.

Please think through your arguments before asserting them. Otherwise you risk coming across as out of touch.

I think Ive said it before, but you'd think you'd thank me for challenging your assertions. The fact that you don't tells me that these are your personal tenets and not an intellectual discussion. Fair, but dont expect me to partake in your idealistic fugue.

My, but you think highly of yourself.
Are you a professor sitting on thesis committees? You're so proud of how you challenge others.

My, but you think highly of yourself.

This is what bothers you?

Sorry, Charge, for a while I was trying to take you seriously. My mistake.

But you think this is alright?

What bothers me is your attitude. You seem to think of yourself as a tough but fair professor trying to enforce disciplined thought. The problem is that your "students" are more knowledgeable than you, so you try to score points by picking nits.

What bothers me is your attitude.

Good, that tells me Im doing something right.

You seem to think of yourself as a tough but fair professor trying to enforce disciplined thought.

Not fair, I have no hope of this ever taking place

The problem is that your "students" are more knowledgeable than you,

When it comes to Lost Cause propaganda, myths and legends, I'd say they are light years ahead of me.

so you try to score points by picking nits.

Picking nits?

Score points? With whom? This is a joke, right?

Charge, I invite you to cite one single time I said anything about slaves being happy. What made them happy, jubilant, was freedom. I DID say that, several times.

If a Bancroft award book is not a standard, what is? You snipe at others' interpretations but cling to a simplistic "slavery was bad". Yes, it was evil, and we are well rid of it. But you seem either uninterested in or maybe just incapable of nuanced thought about something that is surely the most complex topic possible.

I am curious as to which books or primary sources on slavery you have read? Stampp? Phillips? ANY of Genovese? TIME On THE CROSS? How many of the 1930s slave narratives have you read? Frederick Douglass?

See, I have studied all of those and others, written seminar papers based on them, taught them numerous times over the past half century. (You don't REALLY know a book until you teach it to students.)

So I ask, what is the basis for YOUR synthesis or interpretation of this topic?

Look at this one from you:

Lay two unquestioned but seemingly inconsistent facts side by side: slaves remained obedient on the plantations throughout the war, when most white men were away with the army. AND slaves were jubilant to be freed. If the plantations were concentration camps, prisons of the worst sort, the Confederacy could not have survived a year. It is COMPLICATED.
What are we to take away from this? Were there any large or effective concentration camp uprisings? We're they happy too?

What makes you think a lack of uprisings indicates happy participation? Maybe the mental degradation was so thorough so as to erase any sense of hope from the victims.

I wrote that slaves remained obedient on the plantations throughout the war, when most white men were absent. AND they were jubilant to be freed.

YOU wrote" "What makes you think a lack of uprisings indicates happy participation?"

You need to read carefully. Or else stop deliberately misquoting me. Or consult a dictionary that will reveal that one may be obedient without being happy about it.

Your last sentence quoted, about mental degradation and lack of hope, is a reasonable possibility -- which, however, goes against a great deal of research emphasizing pervasive but rarely violent slave resistence. This is one of those areas where the sources seem to go in all directions.

Check please!

@doc mcb

arguing with you is a waste of time

Is that right? What was the argument? All I saw you do was a need to correct my statement.

Remember the logic train?:

DN Jackson said: Prior to the 18th century slavery was an accept part of life the world over.

I said:

Not to slaves.

Then you said:

Except to some extent it WAS accepted by slaves.

You do understand that my statement is a mere rebuttal to what DN Jackson said? It has no stand alone impact.

When you decided to try to undermine my rebuttal, you adopted DN Jackson's statement.

Do you believe that "Prior to the 18th century slavery was an accept part of life the world over…including slaves"?

Additionally, I take it by your lack of reaction to them, you agree with me on all the other rebuttals to what DN Jackson said?

If a Bancroft award book is not a standard, what is?

I'm sure it is a wonderful award; on par and given by the same people who give the Pulitzer Prizes.

You need to read carefully. Or else stop deliberately misquoting me. Or consult a dictionary that will reveal that one may be obedient without being happy about it.

Riiiiiight.

You know, David Irving had a similar preoccupation. He was constantly pointing out that the numbers of deaths in the concentration camps were artificially inflated by the allies to make the Nazis look bad, except, guess what?

Although he was a very good writer, the need to correct the world about accuracy in such matters proves you can be right and, yet, so very wrong.

Thus, if it is important to you that some slaves were alright with slavery, I think it is fine. However, if you are going to seem to support the idea that all people, slaves included, thought slavery perfectly normal, kindly do not be surprised when I misunderstand you.

Prior to the 18th century slavery was accepted worldwide. DN Jackson is correct. "Accepted" is the key word there. It doesn't mean praised, though going back to Aristotle and before there was a belief that some races or cultures were natural masters and some natural slaves. (CS Lewis joked that, looking around, he saw plenty of natural slaves; he just didn't see any natural masters. Original sin, you now.) This idea was one side of the famous debate before Charles V, with Bartolemeu de las Casas arguing AGAINST Aristotle and the Conquestidores.

Slavery was accepted as part of the normal course of human society, just as were other forms of inhumanity such as war, capital pnishment, poverty, etc. One did not necessarily LIKE those things; they were simply part of the misery one had to expect. There was also the FACT that before the industrial revoilution every advanced society had a class of "hewers of wood and drawers of water." of unfree or dependent workers. Someone had to do the scut work. If something is NECESSARY then it really doesn't matter whether anyone LIKES it or not.

One of the main reasons western civilization is so exceptional is that, slowly, slowly, some ideas began to develop that things like equal rights really were possible. English law, Christian belief in imago dei, the Enlightenment, other developments led to our present understandings. But most humans, for most of recorded history, have accepted slavery as an unfortunate but inevitable part of life. You didn't want to BE a slave, or poor, or oppressed yourself; but the idea that those bad things would or could ever disappear was all but unimaginable.

An analogy: the pain of aging is accepted worldwide. (I'm 75 and hurt in various places more or less all the time.) Getting old sucks. Nobody LIKES it, and one does what one can to mitiigate it. But it seems inevitable. Maybe medical science will now, going forward, extend our healthy lives more and more, but (before the last few centuries) it has been ACCEPTED as a bad thing one must simply expect. Similar with other things such as poverty and slavery.

Comparing/contrasting the evils of slavery with aging is, to use an old phrase, comparing apples and oranges. One has nothing to do with the other.

It is an analogy, I said.

analogy
[əˈnaləjē]
NOUN
a comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification.
"an analogy between the workings of nature and those of human societies" · [more]
a correspondence or partial similarity.
"the syndrome is called deep dysgraphia because of its analogy to deep dyslexia"
synonyms:
link · relationship · relation · relatedness · interrelation · interrelatedness · interconnection · interdependence · association · attachment · bond · tie · tie-in · correspondence · parallel · bearing · relevance
a thing which is comparable to something else in significant respects.
"works of art were seen as an analogy for works of nature"
logic
a process of arguing from similarity in known respects to similarity in other respects.
"argument from analogy"
synonyms:
similarity · parallel · parallelism · correspondence · likeness · resemblance · correlation · relation · kinship · equivalence · similitude · symmetry · homology

Here's a simile for you:

Our attitude towards the pain of aging is like the pre-modern attitude towards slavery: they didn't want it or like it, but there did not seem to be much they could do about it.

Ditto their attitude towards poverty, war, and other bad things.

Prior to the 18th century slavery was accepted worldwide. DN Jackson is correct. "Accepted" is the key word there. It doesn't mean praised,…

You have to interpret "accepted"?

though going back to Aristotle and before there was a belief that some races or cultures were natural masters and some natural slaves. (CS Lewis joked that, looking around, he saw plenty of natural slaves; he just didn't see any natural masters. Original sin, you now.) This idea was one side of the famous debate before Charles V, with Bartolemeu de las Casas arguing AGAINST Aristotle and the Conquestidores.

Ohhhh, I see, so, really DN Jakson was merely channeling his inner Aristotle? I suppose that I would miss that subtle, erudite note but that a fellow scholar would've picked that up like the snap of a whip.

Slavery was accepted as part of the normal course of human society, just as were other forms of inhumanity such as war, capital pnishment, poverty, etc. One did not necessarily LIKE those things; they were simply part of the misery one had to expect.

This achieves little. All these things are "accepted" today, I mean, if "accepted" merely means "Well, slavery takes place and there isnt a lot we can do about it thus we just have to tolerate it."

I understand there are more slaves today then ever have been, it doesn't make it right and it doesn't mean the people practicing enslavement are unaware of their evil under a safety in numbers policy.

Both you and DN Jackson give me the impression that you think evil is something that gets cast off once the offender realizes what they are doing is evil and that if large amounts of people are doing something evil, then it is proof of their innocence (or, at a minimum, proof of purity of their hearts) in the matter. Basically, what you are both saying is that slavery was tradition and that tradition relieves the indulgent party of any sin. Once again, that may be their rationalization, it might also be your rationalization but it isn't a defense to say one was only following tradition. As a necessary follow up, I wonder if the real issue isnt a sort of protective deflection for the demographic that slave owners in the old south were composed of. It would expalin the need to back-titrate a sort of idealistic mindset that slave owners were living a perfectly wholesome existence and were justifiably astonished when fiendish abolitionist sentiments crept into their reality like anarchic pamphlets.

But I dont think that DN Jackson really meant "accepted" in the Lighthearted, kittenish, Ye-merry-old-days sense of the word. Here is the broader exchange between myself and DN Jackson:

Au pas de Charge: "They were in a sense, the Drug Lords of their era."

DN Jackson:A poor analogy, in my opinion. Prior to the 18th century slavery was an accept part of life the world over. Perfectly legal and moral. It was only with the Age of Enlightenment that western civilization decided it was wrong morally and should be ended. It was legal until 1865 here, and continued to be legal in other places through most of the 20th century. Drug dealers are selling an illegal product.

Do you notice the sentence following the one about acceptance? That slavery was perfectly legal and moral? It rather renders your approach to the word "accepted" on his behalf somewhat "gymnastic". Really, DN Jackson said that slavery was a lot more than tolerated and makes it sound as if it was the equivalent of a justified perk of the society, and that its practitioners felt righteous about it.

Incidentally, because you are such a devotee of analogy, tell me, what do you think of slave owners viewed as the drug lords of their time?

Both you and DN Jackson give me the impression that you think evil is something that gets cast off once the offender realizes what they are doing is evil and that if large amounts of people are doing something evil, then it is proof of their innocence (or, at a minimum, proof of purity of their hearts) in the matter. Basically, what you are both saying is that slavery was tradition and that tradition relieves the indulgent party of any sin.

No. Give you "the iimpression"? I am not responsible for your misperceptions. The entire human race does evil tbings, constantly; we are Fallen. Slavery is evil, a great sin, and many masters knew it (e.g. Jefferson). Only you are speaking of "innocence". "Tradition" is a bit trickier, but I think I am not interested in trying to examine it with YOU.

Doc. Give up. Walk away. It isn't worth the aggravation arguing with him. Allow him his petty victory and get back to nice relaxing militia pension records.

As to the drug lords analogy: no analogy is perfect, and some are more slippery than others. I was trained to see, first, every event as unique. Patterns (the forest, so to speak) may be discerned but every tree in the forest is unique and of value -- infinite value if we are speaking of humans rather than trees.

No doubt the drug lords analogy has some validity, but it is flawed by the fact that drug lords seldom (I assume) see themselves as good guys. Paternalism allowed the planters to see themselves as good. Some of us today understand that paternalism -- whether from plantation masters or an overweening government with cradle-to-grave "we'll take care of you" -- is bad, because it treats adults as though they are children, denying them the freedom to decide for themselves (possibly foolishly).

So on balance, no, I don't find the drug lords analogy very useful.

John, yes, thank you, you are correct.

I guess one key difference between ageing and historic slavery (in the form under discussion)is that it was possible to put an end to slavery. As far as I know, it has not been possible to do away with ageing.

Except perhaps in certain parts of California.

Doc. Give up. Walk away. It isn't worth the aggravation arguing with him. Allow him his petty victory and get back to nice relaxing militia pension records.

Sadly, there is no victory here for moi, only the tragicomic plummet of another faux je sais tous caught rationalizing his own absolute truths.

No absolutes for you? Evidently not. How about "slavery is bad." Is THAT an absolute truth? or rationalization?

I'm done, you are impossible to reason with.

Addressed to doc mcb only.
He is not here for discussion doc mcb as it is obvious he approaches all of these discussions as a prosecuting attorney questioned you, your beliefs, and thoughts as if you sit in front of the judge and jury --also him.
He will ramble on and on in his examinations and cross examinations attempting at every turn to exhibit what he believes to be his superior intellectual and moral qualities.
A waste of time and breath. I have never "stifled" anyone here as I truly believe in freedom of speech, but am perhaps beginning to understand the argument for the "freedom to NOT listen to speech?" I am now very close.
If you will notice, he surfaces on every single such topic --it is called obsession and agenda. Ignore it, there is no money it it anyway.
As in every time period, such as the Vietnam war protesters --it is just so easy to go along with the prevailing social happenings like little sheep instead of actually listening, learning, and thinking for ones self.
I already simply ignore him and will not reply to his inane and endless babbling .

Russ Dunaway

Regarding slavery in the original 13 colonies, the following information is contained in Mark Boatner's The Civil War Dictionary, 764:

Germantown Quakers denounced the practice in 1688. By the beginning of the Revolution the slaves made up twenty percent of the population of the colonies, three-fourths of these were in the South. Slaves made up forty percent of the population in the four southern colonies, Virginia having the most.

Rhode Island abolished slavery in 1774 and 'abolition swept through Vermont, Pennsulvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.'

From page 2 of the same volume:

'The initial outcry against slavery came as early as 1624 in the colonies, and this feeling gained enough adherents to bring about abolition in most of the northern states before the Revolution.'

As I have said in another thread involving the same folks, I think this stuff is too personal and needlessly emotional. Lots of good info and discussion collapses into some sort of competition.

But then personal judgements are voiced and another good conversation is lost. Rather than single anyone out, I will just make a plea for avoiding this kind of confrontational, competitive, personal approach. Some among you may doubt this can be done. I think it can be done and hope for the best.

I am on another site where we all conduct ourselves like 18th Century Gentlemen. Powdered Whigs, beauty spot, iced claret in the trenches, scented handkerchiefs in our sleeves…
The mere thought of discord appalls us.

Surely you jest…

…it is flawed by the fact that drug lords seldom (I assume) see themselves as good guys…

Watched The Godfather lately? Drug lords can be surprisingly paternalistic.

Russ, yes, thank you.

Kevin, there were slaves in Connecticut right up to Independence. Massachusetts too (Phyllis Wheatley for one). Very few, and as many free blacks, but I think the British government prevented full emancipation, though masters could free individuals (as happened with Wheatley).. But yes, the Quakers and others saw its evil early on.

Bill, yes, "we only kill each other."

'iced claret'?

You, sir, are an ignorant barbarian.

John OFM & doc mcb I have verbally crossed swords ⚔ with Charge before. I try avoid any conflict … But you & I certainly can agree he is "dogged" debater, etc. Even if I disagree with much of what he says, generally, etc.

And I'm sure everyone can agree … slavery in any form is "wrong" … However, sadly it has been a dark part of human history for thousands of years. And is still going on in some places like Africa, the Mid East, etc.

We have a long way to go … but IMO the USA was doing pretty well moving forward and at the same time not forgetting our past. The good, the bad and the ugly … However, I also believe as of late much of our efforts have been pushed back a few decades.

Ha! As a Barbarian, I enjoy an iced claret on a hot day. But now I suspect I may have been insulted! I hope I won't have to challenge someone to an endless argument on a new post!

I am willing to have a discussion, or read a discussion other people are having anytime.
However, when the discussion turns more into more of an interrogation and accusations and attacks are actually being leveled -- even though couched,concealed, disguised, hidden as questions and dialouge -- then I'm simply done.

The very suggestion that most of us are too brainwashed, stupid, indoctrinated, evil, racist etc,etc,etc to recognize some of the history that ALL of mankind has perpetuated --- and we that are not capable of being fully aware of most of the ugly truth -- is not a conversation..
The idea that there just cannot be honest and good differences in opinions is not acceptable to me.
I find it very sad that TMP has morphed into this platform so far away from it's intended purpose.

Russ Dunaway

Good Russ, this is what I am saying as well. As are others here, I think.