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

Trajanus, time passes fast when you are having fun.

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

That's fine. Anybody is free not to answer. I'm free to form my opinion of them by their inability or conscious decision not to answer. They can do the same to me.

Right. But moral posturing gets in the way of friendly debate.

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

It could be. I am not an expert on all things slavery. Thank you for the links.

I think some of my issues with this is the odd double helix between race and slavery in the South. Sometimes, when it is convenient, race is claimed to not be a factor (That slavery was just a matter of opportunity and opportunity happened to be "black" slaves) and then, suddenly, race is indeed a factor to prove that race isnt a factor; along the lines of "see, see, black people owned lots and lots of slaves too!".

This lack of consistency sometimes makes me wonder if a defense isnt in fact taking place vs an examination of history.

However, none of them seems to have owned white slaves, why is that?

It is also a deeper issue that many of these slave owners were of mixed descent. The idea that it is a given that someone who is part black is considered all-black is another fixture of American/Southern racism. For all I know, these people are actually white; certainly they are at least half white? Or does the white heritage detonate when it mixes with black?

"Right. But moral posturing gets in the way of friendly debate."

I'm OK with that. There is no "friendly debate" with Lost Cause Confederate apologists. Exposing them? Yes. Debating them? Ha! No thank you.

Cleburne, okay; but in the absence of generosity or good faith, there is no point in further interaction.

I think some of my issues with this is the odd double helix between race and slavery in the South. Sometimes, when it is convenient, race is claimed to not be a factor (That slavery was just a matter of opportunity and opportunity happened to be "black" slaves) and then, suddenly, race is indeed a factor to prove that race isnt a factor; along the lines of "see, see, black people owned lots and lots of slaves too!".

This lack of consistency sometimes makes me wonder if a defense isnt in fact taking place vs an examination of history.

However, none of them seems to have owned white slaves, why is that?

Charge, yes, this is an important part of what I mean by insisting that it is complicated.

Of course there WERE white "slaves" --actually indentured servants. Win Jordan's book WHITE OVER BLACK details how and when and why Virginia transitioned from that to African chattel slavery. (Bacon's Rebellion was the key event; before that white indentures predominated; afterwards the transition to back slavery was rapid.) The ACCURATE assumption, before industrialization, was that civilization required a subordinate class of workers. If blacks had not been available to fill that role, somebody else would have had to do it. Maybe London slum dwellers or Irish peasants, since the NA Indians would not. Black slavery ALLOWED white freedom. Of course that understanding, accurate in 1660, was less so a hundred years later and MUCH less so after Eli Whitney.

As to the "one drop" rule, that varied from state to state as a matter of law; in LA, a quadroon was legally black but an octoroon was legally white. And things changed after Reconstruction, mostly for the worse.

Of course we have a US Senator who claims Indian descent on the one drop rule basis. And the Cherokee chiefs at the time of the Trail of Tears were mostly white; John Ross was 7/8 white, iirc. It is not just complicated but utterly illogical and inconsistent.

If I were a troublemaker, when asked to give my race on some government form, I'd put "black." When challenged (I am pretty white) I would say, well, let's look at the official definition of being "black" and see if I fit it. Because there is no such definition.

I regard black-white intermarriage as a great thing and a huge sign of progress, and wish we would get to the point where it just doesn't matter. Sowell did an essay entitled "pink and brown people" pointing out that no one's skin is really white, nor black; we are all shades of pink and brown. Setting everything in terms of black and white is not only factually false but also engages all sorts of baggage, mostly about "black": black sheep, black-hearted, etc. The words we think in channel and limit our thoughts in all sorts of ways, often bad ways.

I once tried to get an engineer friend to explain some magic device to me, and we quickly determined that I just didn't have the math to understand.

I'm a pretty sharp guy, but I doubt I am the smartest on this board or thread. But I KNOW THINGS about American history that most will not, because I spent five years reading books and writing papers, in grad school, and since have taught it for 50 years. There are dozens of books that you HAVE TO KNOW -- I have mentioned several of them -- if you are going to even hope to understand about slavery or (different books) the Civil War or the Revolution, etc. At my oral comps (last step before writing a dissertation) I had to be, and was, prepared to discuss hundreds of books -- not just have read them, but had annotated and outlined them, and often bounced them off of other books that dealt with the same subject in different and even contradictory ways. That is what it means to be a PhD in a subject; you are expected to know everything there is to know about your field. (You then fall further and further behind, as new books appear that you lack the time to keep up with.)

So I'm sure I sound arrogant or "know-it-all" on a thread like this. Sorry, I don't mean to. But I did not regard my engineer friend as arrogant when he told me I didn't have the math to follow his thinking; he was correct, I didn't. Fortunately historical facts are maybe a bit less opaque than advanced math, and several here seem to have a good grasp of a lot of them. I've mostly enjoyed this debate and back-and-forth, and learned a thing or two. So thank you (you know who you are).

That's fine. Anybody is free not to answer. I'm free to form my opinion of them by their inability or conscious decision not to answer. They can do the same to me.

As I said above Cleburne, give me your definition of what a "just cause" is and I will considering answering it. Since this is your question I think it is only fair I understand what your terms of reference are.

Personally I think the way you have constructed your question is direct evidence of the tendency of some in this discussion to oversimplify and reduce a complex historical situation to a trope.

Of course we have a US Senator who claims Indian descent on the one drop rule basis. And the Cherokee chiefs at the time of the Trail of Tears were mostly white; John Ross was 7/8 white, iirc. It is not just complicated but utterly illogical and inconsistent.

Now you've made me laugh. But notice that it is common to claim Indian ancestry but uncommon to assert African ancestry. There is a stigma in this country still associated with a color line.

In any case, as fascinating as this is, it isnt thousands of cases but rather a couple dozen cases cloaked by thousands of faux cases of black or mixed race slave owners in the South.

It's a distraction from any sort of claim that the ACW wasnt caused over slavery. There are slavery issues and there are race issues and there are also racial-slavery issues but still, the war was caused by slavery. Now, there were all sorts of aims, and strategies, and politics and assertions but when you get right down to it, it was all about the slaves.

In fact, if anything, your multi-racial examples prove what an attractive proposition slavery is because, if unbanned, it could've re-spread back to the North on the basis that everyone wants slaves. Thus, if anything black slave ownership was a warning that we might all be slaves one day.

In any case, the South fought to hang onto slaves no matter what the consequences. In fact, the Old South's viewpoint on slavery was so perverse, that they actually got the cotton gin backwards; instead of reducing the number of slaves needed to plant the land they had, instead they wanted to use more slaves to plant the whole world.

Hey Doc, I sort of object to you having to explain yourself to those who disagree with you because of what I see as their snobbery. I appreciate you are trying to be fair minded but it really is unfortunate that in a historical discussion participants aren't given the benefit of the doubt. We can disagree with each other without being labelled "Southern apologists" etc..

Personally I think the way you have constructed your question is direct evidence of the tendency of some in this discussion to oversimplify and reduce a complex historical situation to a trope.

Apparently it is so complex that no one can really set down all the myriad reasons the war broke out. For my part, it's true that no matter what the surface reason, all major reasons seem to lead to slavery. That is, with the major exception of more intense white nationalism in the South than the North which is cited in "Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story" by Wilfred M. McClay.

But perhaps education and scholarship can break the logjam here. Remind us, which books and Civil War historians do not think the war was primarily caused because of slavery?

But perhaps education and scholarship can break the logjam here. Remind us, which books and Civil War historians do not think the war was primarily caused because of slavery?

How about starting wtih The Causes of the Civil War edited by Kenneth Stampp. He lays out 7 potential causes and uses various sources to provide background on each one.

In any case, the South fought to hang onto slaves no matter what the consequences. In fact, the Old South's viewpoint on slavery was so perverse, that they actually got the cotton gin backwards; instead of reducing the number of slaves needed to plant the land they had, instead they wanted to use more slaves to plant the whole world.

But remember that cotton exhausts the soil after about five crops. That's why the upper south produced horses and cattle and slaves. Everybody understood, north as well as south, that slavery would either expand or die. Which is why the west was the issue.

Stampp is an excellent historian and his PECULIAR INSTITUTION is one of the dozen books everyone must read to get a handle on slavery. I am not familiar with THE CAUSES OF THE CIVL WAR; I'll wager he lists slavery first, and appropriately so, but it was a COMBINATION of causes working together. Slavery would not have caused the war by itself, but it underlay the other causes like westward expansion and the nature of federalism. And the breakdown of the party system, and the development of mutual paranoia.

It would depend on what one means by "primarily." First on the list? Yes indeed. Sufficient by itself? No.

Charge, I guarantee you that Bill McClay considers slavery the main cause of the war. If you read his chapter on the war, you'll see he tells it almost entirely from the Union perspective, one of many necessary compromises to keep the book short. But why would you deny that southern white nationalism was a thing? It explains better than slavery why all those poor whites fought so hard for the Confederacy.

Stampp looks first at the politics of slavery in the United States leading up the war. In another section later Stampp looks at the morality of slavery.

I agree that it is the combination of causes that creates war in 1861.

Charge, I guarantee you that Bill McClay considers slavery the main cause of the war. If you read his chapter on the war, you'll see he tells it almost entirely from the Union perspective, one of many necessary compromises to keep the book short. But why would you deny that southern white nationalism was a thing? It explains better than slavery why all those poor whites fought so hard for the Confederacy.

I bought and read the book. It's well written.

I dont doubt for a second that white nationalism got doubled down on in the South.

How about starting wtih The Causes of the Civil War edited by Kenneth Stampp. He lays out 7 potential causes and uses various sources to provide background on each one.

I'll look into it. No one else?

Treat yourself to Benet's JOHN BROWN'S BODY. It's an epic poem, 300 or 400 pp. long, and looks at the war from every sort of angle.

John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave.
Spread over it the bloodstained flag of his song,
For the sun to bleach, the wind and the birds to tear,
The snow to cover over with a pure fleece
And the New England cloud to work upon
With the grey absolution of its slow, most lilac-smelling rain,
Until there is nothing there
That ever knew a master or a slave
Or, brooding on the symbol of a wrong,
Threw down the irons in the field of peace.
John Brown is dead, he will not come again,
A stray ghost-walker with a ghostly gun.
Let the strong metal rust
In the enclosing dust
And the consuming coal
That was the furious soul
And still like iron groans,
Anointed with the earth,
Grow colder than the stones
While the white roots of grass and little weeds
Suck the last hollow wildfire from the singing bones.

Bury the South together with this man,
Bury the bygone South.
Bury the minstrel with the honey-mouth,
Bury the broadsword virtues of the clan,
Bury the unmachined, the planters' pride,
The courtesy and the bitter arrogance,
The pistol-hearted horsemen who could ride
Like jolly centaurs under the hot stars.
Bury the whip, bury the branding-bars,
Bury the unjust thing
That some tamed into mercy, being wise,
But could not starve the tiger from its eyes
Or make it feed where beasts of mercy feed.
Bury the fiddle-music and the dance,
The sick magnolias of the false romance
And all the chivalry that went to seed
Before its ripening.

And with these things, bury the purple dream
Of the America we have not been,
The tropic empire, seeking the warm sea,
The last foray of aristocracy
Based not on dollars or initiative
Or any blood for what that blood was worth
But on a certain code, a manner of birth,
A certain manner of knowing how to live,
The pastoral rebellion of the earth
Against machines, against the Age of Steam,
The Hamiltonian extremes against the Franklin mean,
The genius of the land
Against the metal hand,
The great, slave-driven bark,
Full-oared upon the dark,
With gilded figurehead,
With fetters for the crew
And spices for the few,
The passion that is dead,
The pomp we never knew,
Bury this, too.

Bury this destiny unmanifest,
This system broken underneath the test,
Beside John Brown and though he knows his enemy is there
He is too full of sleep at last to care.

He was a stone, this man who lies so still,
A stone flung from a sling against a wall,
A sacrificial instrument of kill,
A cold prayer hardened to a musket-ball:
And yet, he knew the uses of a hill,
And he must have his justice, after all.

He was a lover of certain pastoral things,
He had the shepherd's gift.
When he walked at peace, when he drank from the watersprings,
His eyes would lift
To see God, robed in a glory, but sometimes, too,
Merely the sky,
Untroubled by wrath or angels, vacant and blue,
Vacant and high.

He knew not only doom but the shape of the land,
Reaping and sowing.
He could take a lump of any earth in his hand
And feel the growing.

He was a farmer, he didn't think much of towns,
The wheels, the vastness.
He liked the wide fields, the yellows, the lonely browns,
The black ewe's fastness.

Out of his body grows revolving steel,
Out of his body grows the spinning wheel
Made up of wheels, the new, mechanic birth,
No longer bound by toil
To the unsparing soil
Or the old furrow-line,
The great, metallic beast
Expanding West and East,
His heart a spinning coil,
His juices burning oil,
His body serpentine.
Out of John Brown's strong sinews the tall skyscrapers grow,
Out of his heart the chanting buildings rise,
Rivet and girder, motor and dynamo,
Pillar of smoke by day and fire by night,
The steel-faced cities reaching at the skies,
The whole enormous and rotating cage
Hung with hard jewels of electric light,
Smoky with sorrow, black with splendor, dyed
Whiter than damask for a crystal bride
With metal suns, the engine-handed Age,
The genie we have raised to rule the earth,
Obsequious to our will
But servant-master still,
The tireless serf already half a god—

Touch the familiar sod
Once, then gaze at the air
And see the portent there,
With eyes for once washed clear
Of worship and of fear:
There is its hunger, there its living thirst,
There is the beating of the tremendous heart
You cannot read for omens.
Stand apart
From the loud crowd and look upon the flame
Alone and steadfast, without praise or blame.
This is the monster and the sleeping queen
And both have roots struck deep in your own mind,
This is reality that you have seen,
This is reality that made you blind.

So, when the crowd gives tongue
And prophets, old or young,
Bawl out their strange despair
Or fall in worship there,
Let them applaud the image or condemn
But keep your distance and your soul from them.
And, if the heart within your breast must burst
Like a cracked crucible and pour its steel
White-hot before the white heat of the wheel,
Strive to recast once more
That attar of the ore
In the strong mold of pain
Till it is whole again,
And while the prophets shudder or adore
Before the flame, hoping it will give ear,
If you at last must have a word to say,
Say neither, in their way,
"It is a deadly magic and accursed,"
Nor "It is blest," but only "It is here."

If I were a troublemaker, when asked to give my race on some government form, I'd put "black." When challenged (I am pretty white) I would say, well, let's look at the official definition of being "black" and see if I fit it. Because there is no such definition.

You mean like this guy?:

link

Heh. Well, no, I guess not.

How'd you find that?

Benet on Bull Run:
The congressmen came out to see Bull Run,
The congressmen who like free shows and spectacles.
They brought their wives and carriages along,
They brought their speeches and their picnic-lunch,
Their black constituent-hats and their devotion:
Some even brought a little whiskey, too,
(A little whiskey is a comforting thing
For congressmen in the sun, in the heat of the sun.)
The bearded congressmen with orator's mouths,
The fine, clean-shaved, Websterian congressmen,
Come out to see the gladiator's show Like Iliad gods, wrapped in the sacred cloud
Of Florida-water, wisdom and bay-rum,
Of free cigars, democracy and votes,
That lends such portliness to congressmen.
(The gates fly wide, the bronze troop marches out
Into the stripped and deadly circus-ring,
"Ave, Caesar!" the cry goes up, and shakes
The purple awning over Caesar's seat)
"Ave, Caesar! Ave, O Congressmen,
We who are about to die,
Salute you, congressmen!
Eleven States, New York, Rhode Island, Maine, Connecticut, Michigan and the gathered West,
Salute you, congressmen! The red-fezzed Fire-Zouaves, flamingo-bright,
Salute you, congressmen! The raw boys still in their civilian clothes,
Salute you, congressmen! The second Wisconsin in its homespun grey,
Salutes you, congressmen! The Garibaldi Guards in cocksfeather hats, Salute you, congressmen!
The Second Ohio with their Bedouin-caps,
Salutes you, congressmen!
Sherman's brigade, grey-headed Heintzlemann,
Ricketts' and Griffin's doomed and valiant guns,
The tough, hard-bitten regulars of Sykes
Who covered the retreat with the Marines,
Burnside and Porter, Willcox and McDowell,
All the vast, unprepared, militia-mass
Of boys in red and yellow Zouave pants,
Who carried peach-preserves inside their kits
And dreamt of being generals overnight;
The straggling companies where every man
Was a sovereign and a voter—the slack regiments
Where every company marched a different step;
The clumsy and unwieldy-new brigades
Not yet distempered into battle-worms;
The whole, huge, innocent army, ready to fight
But only half-taught in the tricks of fighting,
Ready to die like picture-postcard boys
While fighting still had banners and a sword
And just as ready to run in blind mob-panic,
Salutes you with a vast and thunderous cry,
Ave, Caesar, ave, O congressmen,
Ave, O Iliad gods who forced the fight!
You bring your carriages and your picnic-lunch
To cheer us in our need. You come with speeches,
Your togas smell of heroism and bay-rum.
You are the people and the voice of the people
And, when the fight is done, your carriages
Will bear you safely, through the streaming rout
Of broken troops, throwing their guns away.
You come to see the gladiator's show,
But from a high place, as befits the wise:
You will not see the long windrows of men
Strewn like dead pears before the Henry House
Or the stone-wall of Jackson breathe its parched
Devouring breath upon the failing charge,
Ave, Caesar, ave, O congressmen,
Cigar-smoke wraps you in a godlike cloud,
And if you are not to depart from us
As easily and divinely as you came,
It hardly matters.

Fighting Joe Hooker once
Said with that tart, unbridled tongue of his
That made so many needless enemies,
"Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?"
The phrase Stings with a needle sharpness, just or not,
But even he was never heard to say,
"Who ever saw a dead congressman?"
And yet, he was a man with a sharp tongue.

Benet, Stephen. John Brown's Body . Aegitas. Kindle Edition.

But notice that it is common to claim Indian ancestry but uncommon to assert African ancestry. There is a stigma in this country still associated with a color line.

I have both Indian and African ancestry, admit it freely, never had any problems. Times have changed.

I have a former student, a beautiful redhead with the palest skin, who married a black man, and they have beautiful children. One of whom was indeed (in middle school, where else) mocked for her race -- whatever it is. Thing is, she then received massive support from friends, the school authorities, the whole society. Bill is right, times have changed.

Apparently the causes of the Civil War are so complex that a bunch of people who have college degrees and have studied history their whole life can't understand them, but poor dirt farmers who couldn't read and write could and were willing to take up arms to defend them.

Apparently the causes of the Civil War are so complex that a bunch of people who have college degrees and have studied history their whole life can't understand them, but poor dirt farmers who couldn't read and write could and were willing to take up arms to defend them.

The entire Spartan state was designed to train the citizenry to keep the slaves in place. Did some of the Spartans not realize this and think "Gee, this is cool that my nation is so dedicated to sports"? Maybe, but that belief doesnt mean that the actual organization of Sparta wasnt for the suppression of liberty.

Similarly, were many ordinary men in the South confused about the big picture of the society they lived in? Could be. But many of the non-slave owners participated in the local militia to guard against slave/black revolts and gladly participated in whatever scrap of white supremacy they could in order to feel better about themselves.

We're neither responsible for nor answerable to the delusions that non slave owning white men in the South wanted to believe in. To the extent they got used by the plantation class for sinister ends, I sympathize but their misplaced tenets do not alter the actual causes of the war which were slavery and white nationalism.

and mutually reenforcing paranoias, and the breakdown of the party system, and the split of every national church over slavery, and so forth. There are reasons why slavery was compromisable in 1820 and not in 1850, much, or 1860, at all.

I have both Indian and African ancestry, admit it freely, never had any problems. Times have changed.

Do you identify as black?

Might beadvantageous

Hey thanks guy for the spirited conversation. Appreciated it. I used to game ACW with a few guys and the games had a bit more intensity to them that Ancients or Napoleonics because of the history. If feel very far removed from Napoleon's Europe or even the Crimea or FPW but not so with ACW.

What made American slavery racist was not that all the owners were white (which they weren't) but that all the slaves were black (or were thought to be).

"Slavery" is not synonymous with "racism". They may indeed exist coterminously, but they are not one in the same thing.

B

Blut, yes, exactly. If the topic is slavery, it is mainly a southern problem (once the Yankees stopped importing Africans in their slave ships -- molasses to rm to slaves.)
If racism is the topic, the south is no more (nor less) guilty than the north and indeed pretty much the whole world.

Marcus I have found gaming the ACW to be a little less than carefree lately myself. There is a bit of underlying feeling there.

My brother and I plan to game (Regimental F&F) the Little Round Top scenario over TG. I have beautiful professionally-made pieces (15mm) for LRT, Devils Den, and the Wheatfield. This may be our 200th or 400th minis game, of all periods, since we started playing in our bedroom with Scrubys in 1962. But yes, the fact that our ancestor JJ McBride and the 5th Texas made it halfway up the slope, and that we have walked the same ground, MATTERS.

"Slavery" is not synonymous with "racism".

It certainly was in the USA. Slavery was also synonymous with rape.

Blut, yes, exactly. If the topic is slavery, it is mainly a southern problem (once the Yankees stopped importing Africans in their slave ships -- molasses to rm to slaves.)If racism is the topic, the south is no more (nor less) guilty than the north and indeed pretty much the whole world.

What about where slavery and race are combined? Ever heard of that?

Christian ethics are supposed to be against this. I dont see why the rest of world, a world that many Americans would never emulate in any other custom, is suddenly a Get-Out-of-Jail Free card for racism.

With all due respect, I decline to take the bait.

B

In the southern US yes, slavery was (in general) combined with racism. That is obvious, and I do not know anyone who would say differently. (It is not so obvious when the owner was also black, but those were very much in the minority, maybe one or two % or less?)

But slavery ENDED in 1865; racism did not. And slavery was mostly confined to the south after 1776; racism was and is not.

I think, Charge, you are insisting on something that no one is disputing.

In the southern US yes, slavery was (in general) combined with racism. That is obvious, and I do not know anyone who would say differently. (It is not so obvious when the owner was also black, but those were very much in the minority, maybe one or two % or less?)

I felt like someone was suggesting differently and wanted to add my thoughts. Black slave owners are a warning that slavery is too attractive to be treated gingerly.

But slavery ENDED in 1865

Theoretically

And slavery was mostly confined to the south after 1776; racism was and is not.

True

I think, Charge, you are insisting on something that no one is disputing.

Well then doc, join me in a celebration of the truth. That is, unless disputed, the truth can only be uttered once?

Hurrah for Truth!!!

Will miracles never cease ….. ;^)

B

mel·a·nin
/ˈmelənən/
noun: melanin

a dark brown to black pigment occurring in the hair, skin, and iris of the eye in people and animals. It is responsible for tanning of skin exposed to sunlight.

We are all people of color, unless you are an albino.

Wolfhag

Yes, pink and brown people.

We are all people of color, unless you are an albino.

Wolfhag

Here are some good places to explore and express your belief:

From the Race Card Project:

"Aren't we all people of color?"

"White, Black, Yellow, Red, – Yes we are all people of color, however our society and institutions have deemed that some colors are more privileged than others."

link

And no doubt you are familiar with this movement:

link

Oh Good Lord – not more of this ridiculous self indulgent post-modern racist posturing.

Michele Norris? Read her CV to see how she has suffered at the hands of systemic institutionalized racism in America. OTOH, there is clearly good money in it.

Try Thomas Sowell for a different point of view.

B

Would someone please drive a stake through the heart of this thread?

Yes, please.

B

If we haven't exhausted this, it has surely exhausted us. I am ready to talk about the ACW itself, like with the armies and all. Maybe miniatures even.