"The 'Other' Side of the Slavery Question" Topic

Sure. To what end?

He [Lincoln] worried, however, that once the war ended the courts might rule against him, which is why he supported the 13th Amendment.

Here is the hypocrisy of the North at work. How could any of the Civil War amendments to the Constitution be considered legal? 3/4 of the states did not vote in favor of the amendments. Well that's because, it was argued, the Southern states were in rebellion and they didn't get included in the amending totals. Where does it say in the 1787 Constitution that "rebellion" excludes a state's consent in changing the Constitution? Nowhere of course.

Now if the seceding states were no longer part of the Union then of course the amendments were passed legally. That would mean, of course, that the Union's aggression was a war of conquest against an entity outside the polity of the United States and not a suppression of rebellion. Either you are in or out but the North played the game on both sides of the issue to its benefit. Same with the creation of West Virginia. I don't remember reading that the state of Virginia ever consented to having its integrity broken up. Article 4, Section 3 of the 1787 Constitution states:

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

It is interesting that the North would acknowledge West Virginians' right to self determination with respect to their remaining in the polity of Virginia but would deny this same right to Southern States remaining in the polity of the United States. How does that work again?

I would not go quite as far as Blutarski in suggesting that ACW was only a war predicated on money, power and control but they do explain much of the North's approach.

Just had a look at some of Mr Seabrook's books. Words fail me.
In fact, maybe my eyes failed me. I saw a number of other similar looking websites which I did not visit.

So…here is another question. Is the war actually over?

Marcus – I think money explains the South's approach quite well also. Slaves as property, producing income, were a form of currency in a sense. And nothing says power and control like slavery.

Tort, yes and no. Many planters saw slaves as under-productive and requiring, literally, more care and feeding than they produced. Money and control were certainly part of it, and definitive in many cases; but other factors weighed heavier in many cases. It is, as someone keeps saying, complicated.

TIME ON THE CROSS argues, based on detailed analysis of plantation records, that slaves typically consumed a higher % of the wealth they produced than did northern factory workers. Of course slaves received no wages in most case, although far from all; there were plenty who earned and saved enough to buy their freedom. But all slaves had to be fed and housed and clothed from birth to death, which was not true of northern workers. No unions nor Social Security back then. TOTC is controversial, but not to be dismissed.

Sure. To what end?

For Levity's sake. I thought we could all use a little laugh to lighten the atmosphere.

Okay, yes, and thank you.

One aspect is that slaves were rarely used for dangerous work; they were too valuable. And "worked to death" probably happened, tragically, but was far from typical, at least in North America; the Caribbean was much worse. Thomas Sowell, in the chapter on "The Economics of Slavery" in MARKETS AND MINORITIES, tells of a northern visitor in New Orleans who watched steamboats being unloaded of 500 pound cotton bales, thrown onto the dock often from an upper deck. He noted that slaves did the tossing, but the men catching the heavy and bouncy bales were white, mostly Irish. He asked and was told "the slaves are too valuable to risk, but nobody cares if a paddy gets his back broken."

Where slaves WERE assigned to work that required individual initiative, unsupervised, and often with escape a possibility -- lumbering, hunting, etc. -- slaves were typically paid competitive wages.

Mary Chesnut recounts how the house slaves at one of her plantations, when she was not in residence for months at a time, hired themselves out as cooks and maids etc in hotels in a nearby town or city. In theory she could have claimed their wages, but pissing off the people who cook for you is not a very good survival strategy.

We impose our own notion of racial solidarity on antebellum society, but I think it is unlikely that a slave lumberjack, or for that matter a blacksmith or other skilled craftsman, necessarily or automatically saw himself in solidarity with unskilled field hands. MAYBE; but it is just as likely that he saw himself as having a pretty good gig, with pay perhaps, and status, and job security.

One of the bad things that happened after the war is that white craftsmen worked very hard at reducing competition from now-freed black craftsmen. Large plantations tended to have their own smiths and brickmakers and masons, and carpenters and wheelwrights, etc,. and these were now free to offer their services in direct competition to whites. This is one reason why freedmen mostly voted for planter-class whites and not poor whites -- and did so for about 20 years before Jim Crow.

Hi doc & Tortorella,

Just an aside on the sometimes underappreciated role of slaves in connection with the southern plantation economy.

Slaves were not only valuable in terms of their productive labor. They also represented equal or even greater value as financial assets that could be pledged as collateral against loans or guarantees against other financial schemes. As such, they represented a huge (and probably the principal) component of the financial assets of the ante-bellum southern slave states. None of the former slave-owners received any sort of compensation when their slaves were freed (i.e. legally owned property legislated out of existence – Great Britain approached that problem rather differently, to their credit). This expropriation destroyed the plantation economy of the South and left it financially on its knees for nearly a century.

B

Blut, yes, but at least some large slave owners rejoiced nevertheless.

In the long run, and especially in an agrarian economy, it is who owns the land. And of course many freedmen continued living in the same cabins and working in the same fields as sharecroppers. Freedom DID give them some leverage -- Sowell has a chapter on that -- but the transition was necessarily gradual.

Hi Marcus,
You wrote – "I would not go quite as far as Blutarski in suggesting that ACW was only a war predicated on money, power and control but they do explain much of the North's approach."

To clarify my opinion/commentary on this very complicated issue and this seemingly interminably long thread -

> The South seceded from the Union because they recognized that the Northern faction had won the struggle for control of the national government via the steady conversion of various territories into new non-slave states which irretrievably tipped the balance of power in Congress (this was in effect the "money, power, control" issue).

> The North (IMO) invaded the seceded states, thereby initiating the war, simply because there was no other strategic option for preserving the union in the long run.

> The slavery issue, although of intense interest among a relatively small faction of American religious and intellectual moralists, was not by any means seen as a compelling issue among the general public; nor was it a decisive factor in bringing about the war.

> The testimonials/assertions of support for slavery made by the seceded southern states relate to the importance of slavery to the existing and very successful southern economic model.

FWIW.

B

So Kevin is in the DH for speaking the truth.
O tempora o mores!

Hi doc,
I looked into this a long time back (when I was more acutely interested in the topic) and the financial value of slaves was surprisingly high … very often surpassing the land value of the plantation itself and representing the major asset class of the family fortune. In many respects, slaves were far more fungible than land or other non-monetary assets.

FWIW.

B

He noted that slaves did the tossing, but the men catching the heavy and bouncy bales were white, mostly Irish. He asked and was told "the slaves are too valuable to risk, but nobody cares if a paddy gets his back broken."

Sheesh. It's a reminder of what an all around more brutal age that was.

We impose our own notion of racial solidarity on antebellum society,

Do we? Im fairly sure the antebellum South had its own version of white supremacy.

but I think it is unlikely that a slave lumberjack, or for that matter a blacksmith or other skilled craftsman, necessarily or automatically saw himself in solidarity with unskilled field hands. MAYBE; but it is just as likely that he saw himself as having a pretty good gig, with pay perhaps, and status, and job security.

I think this is true but we didnt get rid of slavery just because blacks did or didn't like it but because when you have the notion that people can be legally exploited it reduces everyone's (Well, almost everyone's) quality of life…and in so many ways.

Here is the hypocrisy of the North at work. How could any of the Civil War amendments to the Constitution be considered legal? 3/4 of the states did not vote in favor of the amendments. Well that's because, it was argued, the Southern states were in rebellion and they didn't get included in the amending totals. Where does it say in the 1787 Constitution that "rebellion" excludes a state's consent in changing the Constitution? Nowhere of course.

I thought Andrew Johnson got several of the formerly rebellious Southern States to ratify the 13th Amendment?

Some of what Lincoln did wouldnt pass the Constitutional sniff test during normal times. Remember, the ACW was a disaster for everyone, except maybe for war profiteers.

Well, of course the south believed in white supremacy. So did the north. And SO, it may well be in many cases, did non-whites. It was a widely held view not really destroyed until after 1945. (I was born in 1946.)

Does anyone think that had MLK been active in the 1920s he'd have been any more successful than BT Washington or WEB DuBois or other black leaders? It took the Holocaust, the support of liberals and especially American Jews, and the Cold War to make the civil rights movement a success. The timing was right, finally.

Charge, that last paragraph is exactly right.

The North (IMO) invaded the seceded states, thereby initiating the war, simply because there was no other strategic option for preserving the union in the long run.

No. That implies that the Confederacy was a legitimate nation. You cannot invade yourself.
The "North" was putting down a rebellion and insurrection.
Funny thing. The Confederates explicitly recognized they were unlawfully rebelling by calling themselves "Rebs", and "Johnny Reb".

Well, of course the south believed in white supremacy. So did the north. And SO, it may well be in many cases, did non-whites. It was a widely held view not really destroyed until after 1945. (I was born in 1946.)

I think the South's version was stronger because it needed to justify the notion of slavery.

Charge, that last paragraph is exactly right.

Im excited that I have a paragraph that's exactly right. Which "last" paragraph? I have so many.

Some of what Lincoln did wouldnt pass the Constitutional sniff test during normal times. Remember, the ACW was a disaster for everyone, except maybe for war profiteers.

Yup.

Well, Lincoln was the man of the hour. I dont think anyone else wouldve seen it to its conclusion nor do I think the South banked on getting him as as such a tough adversary. In the end it obsessed him and then killed him.

Lincoln wasnt going to be the guy who lost half the nation. Has any other US President wanted to lose a war? In some ways he created a very imperial presidency but in another, he absorbed all the responsibility for the Union losses which allowed the war to continue. You must agree, it aged him 30 years.

You did suggest that people come at the right time but might not be as effective outside of that time.

Well, of course the south believed in white supremacy.

Actually, a lot of that came after the war. There was a rather famous book that used 'the latest science' to prove, not white supremacy, but black racial inferiority. Darwin's theory of evolution was also misunderstood to support the idea of human races being unequal.

You might say that before and during the war, slavery proponents simply assumed that blacks deserved to be slaves (perhaps 'God's will'); but after the war, there rose up arguments that gave support to what had been mere prejudices.

Meanwhile, free blacks were clearly showing they were the equal of any man, if people would just open their eyes.

Actually Bill the full title of Darwin's On the Origins of Species is actually On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life . I think people quite correctly understood what Darwin was arguing for at the time and it led sadly but unmistakenly to the Holocaust eighty years later. Richard Weikart wrote an interesting and well researched book called From Darwin to Hitler that showed the historical and intellect link between Darwin's publications and the Hitler's racist program during the Third Reich.

And now the tone is trending toward slavery wasn't that bad. They were well treated because they were valuable. But its COMPLICATED. The Confederate apologists here are laughable.

Bill and Marcus are both right. The idea of "natural slaves" and "natural masters goes back to Aristotle, whose writings were the basis for the Conquestidores' side of the great debate against Bartholemeu de las Casas, all honor to him. Ethnocentrism is simply a human survival mechanism. What we decry as racism was simply part of the "natural order of things."

THEN along came Darwin who made it seem SCIENTIFIC. ("Social Darwinism" could be and was used to opposite directions. But if one culture lives in grass huts and the other in skyscrapers, it isn't hard for people to conclude that one is more "evolved" than the other.)

Cleburne, try to stretch your imagination out a little bit. That a slave might be treated well does NOT mean that "slavery wasn't that bad." It means that some people are kind and some are cruel -- in any culture -- and that slavery gives greater effect to the cruelty, by reducing the power of the object of the cruelty to resist it. Being a slave was like being incarcerated today: it is NEVER a good thing (from the standpoint of the prisoner) but HOW bad or worse it is depends on the character of the warden -- so is outside any control by the inmates.

Paternalism is a widely used word and concept with regard to American slavery. The Davises treatment of the slave child was paternalistic, and kind. The white south encouraged paternalism for many reasons, including guilt and control, and also because it mitigated some of the worst aspects of the system, to some extent. Nothing wrong with a father taking care of his dependent children. I did that. The problem is relegating adults who should be responsible for themselves into the status of children permanently.

Doc, whatever helps you sleep at night. Because, you know, its COMPLICATED.

Being a slave was like being incarcerated today: it is NEVER a good thing (from the standpoint of the prisoner) but HOW bad or worse it is depends on the character of the warden -- so is outside any control by the inmates.

With the exception that when you are incarcerated, the hope is that you've done something wrong and it isnt happening just as a result of what and who you are. Thus, it isnt just the kindness of the warden but it is also the initial fairness of the law and the system.

…try to stretch your imagination out a little bit.

This is a two way street. If we must accept that there was a certain symbiotic social contract between free and slave and between black and white, then why is it so hard to imagine that these same people assumed that the world was always meant to be the way they knew it only when it was the way they liked it? It's easy to be generous when you have absolute power but we can see what happens to generosity when privilege is challenged or threatened.

Certainly, even a whiff of a hint of change for slavery was enough to cause an extremely violent reaction. Why then, if there was so much mutual understanding and brotherly interaction, could Southern whites not make the connection that ending slavery was a viable possibility? Did they ever discuss the possibility of ending it completely, of being compensated, of retrofitting their economy?

Additionally, the idea that because someone is convinced that something awful is right, it gets them off the hook is absurd. These arent grey areas. In every case where the South could've done the right thing, it acted almost uniformly and in concert to pull in the most self serving direction and double down on its deviant behavior with extreme prejudice.

Further, why do we have to assume that people from an earlier time did not face competing visions of what was possible? I thought we werent supposed to think of them as all two dimensional Simon Legrees? Mary Chestnut is tossed around like a football to prove the southern elite had a conscience but only when it proves that people were warm and human towards slaves. When it comes to using Chestnut as proof that large numbers of Southerners had access to a countervailing morality at the time and purposefully chose to avoid it, it's crickets.

This is STILL going on?

A few points:
America was not the only nation or culture to transport slaves from their homes to unfamiliar and foreign locations. In fact, most did just that, for the range that they operated in for either conquest or trade.
The Babylonians forced conquered Jews to travel over eight hundred miles into slavery.
The Romans did indeed transport slaves across the Mediterranean.
The Vikings captured slaves in the Mediterranean regions and Africa and sold them in Europe.
Slaves were commonly traded across great distances before the discovery of the New World— and if those earlier civilizations had been capable of transporting slaves across the Atlantic, I doubt anything would have stopped them from doing so, either. A lack of ability for transoceanic travel is not proof of some sort of "gentler" attitude about slavery that would have precluded using it.
Not that this excuses anything at all done by later civilizations or later cultures. It just means if you're going to condemn the atrocity that was (and still is) slavery, you're gonna have to start much, much further back than 400 years.

And for the record, I don't see anybody trying to excuse the South here, either. Bringing up marginal websites from total nut jobs which no one else has cited and then trying to say that proves YOUR point is neither logical nor rational, nor good rhetoric. It doesn't prove anything at all, except that there are sick people out there, and always will be. Deal with what people here say, rather than going after straw men unrelated to their points.

Again: NO ONE IN THIS THREAD IS TRYING TO REHABILITATE THE OLD SOUTH.
That's the biggest straw man of this discussion, and it's become annoying. Saying the motivations to go to war are varied is NOT rehabilitating the Old South. It also doesn't change the fundamental fact that slavery was indeed the root cause of the war. I think that's actually agreed upon, but some here keep trying to read discussion of fine details as going against that. It is possible for slavery to be the root cause AND for the details which produced the war itself to be myriad and complicated. And that's neither factually incorrect nor "supportive" of the South nor excusing slavery nor excusing or defending racism, or anything of the sort. It's just saying that yes, history is often complicated, and that complication should be studied to better understand both our origins and the complications which exist in our own time. Such understanding does not excuse the past, nor does it justify the present— it just helps us think. And that is how we will improve our present— not by rejecting the past outright (that's a very foolish thing to do), but by learning from it, and discovering both the bad and the good. Thus we can then look at our own time and weigh it more wisely, and hopefully make better choices for the future we create.

Well said Charge.

Well Parzival, when you have people in the thread that can't even give their personal opinion on whether the South fought for a just cause, I disagree that nobody here is trying to rehabilitate the Confederacy.

Cleburne, I find the oversimplification of Southern Secession and the reasons for it that you and others take in this discussion inaccurate. It is that simple. I think you are wrong both in fact and in approach. That is not an apology for any sort.

This is not a discussion about the merits of slavery. It is about trying to understand the motivation of North and South that led to the ACW. It is a historical overview of forces that led to the Secession Crisis of 1860 and what came out of it.

Mary Chestnut is tossed around like a football to prove the southern elite had a conscience but only when it proves that people were warm and human towards slaves. When it comes to using Chestnut as proof that large numbers of Southerners had access to a countervailing morality at the time and purposefully chose to avoid it, it's crickets.

Yet there were serious efforts in Virginia to end slavery right after Nat Turner -- ineffective because he scared the pee out f everyone, since Nat acknowledged that his master had treated him well. The south's clinging to slavery after 1833 was far more motivated by fear than by greed or racial snobbery.

The Chesnuts HATED slavery. She said so repeatedly, and saw abolition as the BLESSING that partially reconciled her to the failure of the south's attempt to win its independence of Yankees. And she was far from the only one who felt that way, she mentions others in her diary.

Yes, a society may be judged for its moral failures, and it is proper to condemn the south for slavery. Some of them condemned themselves for that. But they were trapped, whites and blacks alike. Yes, it really is that complicated.

July 8 1862
Table-talk to-day: This war was undertaken by us to shake off the yoke of foreign invaders. So we consider our cause righteous. The Yankees, since the war has begun, have discovered it is to free the slaves that they are fighting. So their cause is noble. They also expect to make the war pay. Yankees do not undertake anything that does not pay. They think we belong to them. We have been good milk cows – milked by the tariff, or skimmed. We let them have all of our hard earnings. We bear the ban of slavery; they get the money. Cotton pays everybody who handles it, sells it, manufactures it, but rarely pays the man who grows it. Second hand the Yankees received the wages of slavery. They grew rich. We grew poor. The receiver is as bad as the thief. That applies to us, too, for we received the savages they stole from Africa and brought to us in their slave-ships. As with the Egyptians, so it shall be with us: if they let us go, it must be across a Red Sea – but one made red by blood.

April 23, 1865
These negroes are unchanged. The shining black mask they wear does not show a ripple of change; they are sphinxes. Ellen has had my diamonds to keep for a week or so. When the danger was over she handed them back to me with as little apparent interest in the matter as if they had been garden peas.
One year ago we left Richmond. The Confederacy has double-quicked down hill since then. One year since I stood in that beautiful Hollywood by little Joe Davis's grave. Now we have burned towns, deserted plantations, sacked villages. "You seem resolute to look the worst in the face," said General Chesnut, wearily. "Yes, poverty, with no future and no hope." "But no slaves, thank God!" cried Buck.

The South seceded from the Union because they recognized that the Northern faction had won the struggle for control of the national government via the steady conversion of various territories into new non-slave states which irretrievably tipped the balance of power in Congress (this was in effect the "money, power, control" issue).

Well said Blutarski. The only point I would emphasis is that the interests at play between North and South go far beyond the matter of slavery itself (as your third point suggests.) Slavery, in fact, became a proxy in the 1850s for a much larger political struggle between the two sections.

Yes, Marcus, but I'm not asking for a debate on the facts. I'm asking for a personal opinion. Those are two different things. And you can't seem to be able to formulate or provide one.

I also disagree, Parzival, but I think it is a subtle thing sometimes. A have your cake and eat it too thing – yes there was slavery but let me tell you about all this other stuff. As slavery is acknowledged as the root cause, I can get by with it.

You make some other great points.

I also keep saying here in so many words that slavery was the root cause of the war. I also say that many who fought for the Confederacy did not understand that to be the case, acted in good faith, according to what they believed or were told. And some did not. And though the North had ended slavery, it remained a racist culture.

We all own our history and race has always been a factor. Some fear those of color and different cultures as our demographics shift. They look for help to face the future.

The truth is taking a tremendous beating. We live with lies upon lies that contradict what we see with our own eyes, hear with our own ears. Reality slips away, and we hang on to half -truths, long ago lies and political grifters to relieve the anxiety. And we have been building walls everywhere.

We need our past to guide us and sometimes these threads reflect that need. They are not directly about miniatures, but maybe they reflect one reason we are attracted to miniatures as a way to play out the narratives.

Parzival, you are right on about the future…

Slavery was never a proxy – it was the foundational issue from which the political differences grew into war IMO.

Yes, it became complex, but maybe you can describe some issue, some difference that caused the war but had nothing to do with and cannot be traced back to slavery. That's where I don't get what you are saying.

Thank you, once again, Parzival.

Well said Blutarski. The only point I would emphasis is that the interests at play between North and South go far beyond the matter of slavery itself (as your third point suggests.) Slavery, in fact, became a proxy in the 1850s for a much larger political struggle between the two sections.

Marcus, yes, agreed. Slavery was certainly the obvious difference, but the south had developed as a different culture, a different civilization, right from the start. Contrast Va with New England in, say, 1640 or 1650, when most of the unfree workers were still white indentures. Staple crop agrarian societies are just fundamentally DIFFERENT from small-farm living-off-the-sea societies, and uptight Calvinists are quite different from laid back Anglicans. Slavery was indeed a proxy for a lot of other differences also.

Tort, no, it was not JUST a proxy, but it was indeed very much one.

Cleburne, he won't tell you because he doesn't trust you.

"Tort, no, it was not JUST a proxy, but it was indeed very much one."

Yes doc, this is clearer.

What is there to trust? I don't know him in real life. I can't do anything against him. Or her. The only downside to providing a personal opinion on an anonymous forum is if you are ashamed of it because others will view you negatively for it.

I don't remember reading that the state of Virginia ever consented to having its integrity broken up.

Well, it did. The Wheeling Convention of 1861 declared secession and the Virginia state government to be illegal, then set up a Union-loyal government for the whole state (although, of course, practically confined to areas controlled by the Union army). The capital was moved to Alexandria, eventually. THEN that state government eventually consented to the creation of the state of West Virginia.

East Tennessee Unionists failed to take this route, but actually petitioned the (secessionist) state legislature for permission to form a new state, which would remain in the Union. The state legislature declined to respond to the petition.

Note that while the Union take on splitting Virginia might be inconsistent, so was that of the Confederacy, which was, of course, founded on the right to unilaterally split things up!

I would be careful of taking Mary Boykin Chesnut's diary as gospel. She retouched it after the war before it was published, so it's impossible to know which parts are her original thoughts, and which are not.

That is so, but it still reflects her thinking about these matters before and after the war.

This is STILL going on?

Yeah, it's still going on. It's been going on from before we were a nation.

A few points:
America was not the only nation or culture to transport slaves from their homes to unfamiliar and foreign locations. In fact, most did just that, for the range that they operated in for either conquest or trade.
The Babylonians forced conquered Jews to travel over eight hundred miles into slavery.
The Romans did indeed transport slaves across the Mediterranean.
The Vikings captured slaves in the Mediterranean regions and Africa and sold them in Europe.
Slaves were commonly traded across great distances before the discovery of the New World— and if those earlier civilizations had been capable of transporting slaves across the Atlantic, I doubt anything would have stopped them from doing so, either. A lack of ability for transoceanic travel is not proof of some sort of "gentler" attitude about slavery that would have precluded using it.
Not that this excuses anything at all done by later civilizations or later cultures. It just means if you're going to condemn the atrocity that was (and still is) slavery, you're gonna have to start much, much further back than 400 years.

The Babylonians, eh?

Funny, when I discuss the vikings, no one tells me I have to also talk about the Old South.

You should know, and you must do, that the Old South used exactly the same arguments you just did to defend and justify slavery.

ushistory.org/us/27f.asp

Thus, if you aren't defending it too, you are doing an impressive imitation of defending it.

And for the record, I don't see anybody trying to excuse the South here, either.

See above

Bringing up marginal websites from total nut jobs which no one else has cited and then trying to say that proves YOUR point is neither logical nor rational, nor good rhetoric. It doesn't prove anything at all, except that there are sick people out there, and always will be. Deal with what people here say, rather than going after straw men unrelated to their points.

With all due apologies to doc, if you're going to challenge this then I have to say that when doc mentioned there were a lot of black slaveholders too, he not only gave me the impression that they were smoking cigars and wearing plantation hats while hi-fiveing white plantation owners in a race neutral capitalist approach to slavery, he also directly asked me to google it.

Aside from articles mentioning that the vast majority of these cases of black slave owners were freed people of color living in safe zones and purchasing their relatives/friends to rescue them from abuse, the only website that i found relatively quickly to also position black slave ownership as proof of black people freely indulging in the plantation system was a site dedicated to both antisemitism and white supremacy.

Thus, it was not only directly on point but it was a result of a challenge for me to search on the topic. I thought doc would be interested to know who else held that opinion.

Further research on the site produced several books making astonishing claims. To his credit, doc also found them astonishing and we had a good laugh over it. I hope that's alright with you?

Although I am not sure you understand the strawman concept. I must refute your assertion and further, suggest your strawman assertion is in itself a strawman.

Again: NO ONE IN THIS THREAD IS TRYING TO REHABILITATE THE OLD SOUTH.

I dont know if they are or not; although sometimes it can seem so. And, in any case, they are free to do so, the Old South deserves a defense just like anything else. However, I dont have to accept what is said and if I think an utterance is more craft than fact, I will refute it.

Such understanding does not excuse the past, nor does it justify the present— it just helps us think. And that is how we will improve our present— not by rejecting the past outright (that's a very foolish thing to do), but by learning from it, and discovering both the bad and the good.

In fact, sometimes you can deduce what people think by what they dont say. I see a lot of concern for plantation owners, for non slave owning whites and for the Old South generally but, except for doc, I see very little support or promotion of blacks, their feelings, their rights, their heroism or sufferings. Victim-hood and absence of empathy are their own type of rehabilitation for an unspoken grievance.

That's the biggest straw man of this discussion, and it's become annoying. Saying the motivations to go to war are varied is NOT rehabilitating the Old South.

Just how many strawmen are there here? Enough for a bale?

I have always believed there were many motivations for war but they are either small in terms of percentage when compared to slavery or, they are coaxially attached to slavery.

It also doesn't change the fundamental fact that slavery was indeed the root cause of the war.

We do agree on this.

Cleburne:

The only downside to providing a personal opinion on an anonymous forum is if you are ashamed of it because others will view you negatively for it.

That attitude is precisely why he (nor I) does not trust you.
Playing "gotcha!" undermines trust.

Charge, sigh, I'm afraid you missed a lot of the point about black slave owners. There were rather more, and rather more prominent, than your sources suggested. If you want to take the time, read all of the threads from this Wiki link. I posted just one of them

.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Black_slave_owners_in_the_United_States

Does Bill keep any stats on Threads I wonder?

This is the 598 post on a Thread were the OP had no specific mention of the American Civil War.

Has this been beaten on any other Board in relation to its main topic area – comedy items excluded?

link

Antoine Dubuclet Jr. (1810 – December 18, 1887) was the State Treasurer of Louisiana from 1868 to 1878. Before the American Civil War, Dubuclet was one of the wealthiest African Americans in the nation. After the war, he was the first person of African descent to hold the office of Louisiana treasurer. He was a Republican.

Dubuclet was born in Iberville Parish near Baton Rouge. He was the son of Antoine Dubuclet Sr., and Marie Felecite Gray. Both were free blacks; his father was part owner of Cedar Grove, a successful sugar plantation, which he had inherited from his parents, Joseph Antoine Dubuclet and Rosie Belly. Upon his father's death, his mother moved to New Orleans with her younger children; Dubuclet took over his father's responsibilities and assisted in managing the plantation which held more than seventy slaves. In 1834, the plantation was divided between Dubuclet and his siblings.[1][2]

Family
In the mid-1830s he met and married Claire Pollard, a wealthy free woman of color who owned a plantation and 44 slaves.[3] This marriage lasted till her death in 1852. His successful management of both his and his wife's properties allowed him to acquire additional properties, which included a plantation on the west bank of the Mississippi upriver from New Orleans. By 1860, he owned more than one hundred slaves and was considered the wealthiest black slaveholder in Louisiana.[1][4] His first wife, Claire, died in 1852. They had nine children together, and sent them to France for their education. Several of his daughters remained there and married Frenchmen. Two of his sons received degrees in medicine. In the early 1860s, he remarried Mary Ann Walsh. They had three children.

Later career
The Civil War devastated the sugar industry in Louisiana and impoverished Dubuclet along with his fellow planters.[1]

Political career
In 1868, Dubuclet was nominated as the Republican candidate for state treasurer. Later that year, Dubuclet along with the entire Republican ticket won the election. Dubuclet took financial charge of a bankrupt state. Dubuclet along with other members of the state administration were successful in reducing the state's debt. He was joined in this work by two of his sons, who served as his clerks. Dubuclet was reelected both in 1870 and 1874. Dubuclet was the only office holder allowed to remain in office during the minor coup d'état, known as the Battle of Liberty Place that occurred in September 1874.[5] Dubuclet survived an impeachment attempt in 1876 and did not seek reelection in 1878.[1]

Doc adds: wonder if anyone has done a biography? It would be fascnating.