Posted on 11/26/2009 10:19:55 AM PST by dynachrome
Slavery in the South was doomed anyway, and would have died off within a few more decades.
Slavery was dependent upon abundant cheap land, because slave labor is so inefficient. A slave works just hard enough to avoid punishment. A free man farming his own land works harder, because he's working for himself. Consequently, he can pay more for land than a slave owner and still make a profit.
As the US's population expanded, and the available farmland was bought up, the slave owners would have been squeezed out unless they managed to get special legislation passed to protect their status from competition.
Exactly! The slave owners already knew the days of slavery would not last long. Remember the mid-1800’s was the beginning of industrial innovations much more efficient. The first cotton harvester was patented in 1850, and even though it took years to perfect the horse pulled one and then put an engine to it, it was still more efficient than hand picking.
Jefferson Davis was a scholar all his life and the Army used him as a labor innovator, even. He was much more of scholar than Abraham Lincoln ever was, as were many plantation owners.
It always amazes me that the north turns up its nose and presents southerners as ignorant when they had built so much more wealth and had a better standard of living. AND they hide their heads when it’s pointed out that before, during and AFTER the war, slaves were still held in the north and had to also be FORCED to release their slaves because of the great Emancipation Act. OR that the standard of living in the south is STILL much better than the ghettos in the cities of the north. NOR do they even acknowledge that when the north had no more slave labor that they used children as laborers in their factories and a law had to passed to put the quaitus to that!
And something that is quietly amusing to me, is the great apologist in our White House today has gone all over the planet apologizing for the US, when was his arabic/muslim ancestors in Kenya that were selling off the indigenous black Africans on the slave markets on the road to Mombassa because they would not convert to Islam...and we haven’t heard him squeak out an apology for that anywhere!
Amazing, isn’t it?
Certainly not. A great many people have managed to cut through the myth and nonsense surrounding both sides of the rebellion. You just don't seem to be one of them.
So says somebody that hasn’t ever read a fact in his life.
You have a great day! It’s been rather amusing.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. But I submit to you that not a single Southern leader of the rebellion, military or civilian, believed that slavery was on its way out in 1861.
Slavery was dependent upon abundant cheap land, because slave labor is so inefficient. A slave works just hard enough to avoid punishment.
So what alternative to slavery was available to the large-scale plantation owners? Hire free labor? From where? Where was this vast supply of labor to be found? And free labor expected to be paid. And if labor was in short supply then the price went up. Slave labor was reliable. It was cheap. And it could be sold for cash money in market where demand usually outstripped supply.
As the US's population expanded, and the available farmland was bought up, the slave owners would have been squeezed out unless they managed to get special legislation passed to protect their status from competition.
Which is why they found the prospect of being frozen out of the western territories serious enough to rebel over.
as a southerner I'd say never to wage a war just to sue for peace to be left alone
wage war to crush and change the political will of your enemy by force....Forrest knew this, Jackson knew it, Grant and Bill Sherman sure as hell knew it.
we have completely forgotten it..
not to mention standard of living....anyone here seen slave quarters on plantations
no worse than most yeoman class folks in rural areas
the issue was over one man owning another insofar as slavery went, not about their treatment so much...not in North America.
I thought this thread was about comparisons to today not just more bait for south bashers?
their little gang must be meeting up this morning...no Muzzzies to defend or Sarah Palin for them to bash...
just their bigotry towards white in general and southerners in particular on display as usual
shame...could have been a cool thread....but they always ruin it...and they wonder why we really fought them...they're jerks then and still are today...and they almost all vote Democrat.
It's is far more telling to compare the life expectancy of a Southern slave to the mine and factory workers in the North. Many of them never saw 45, whereas the average life expectancy for male slaves was about 56.
You bring up an interesting point. In 1860, the Democrats nominated Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, but southerners opposed him because he opposed Federal protection for slavery. So, like spoiled brats who didn’t get their way, they stomped off in a huff and held their own convention and nominated someone else, guaranteeing Lincoln’s election.
lol..and Sumner and Stevens were paragons of patience and virtue right?
lol..and Sumner and Stevens were paragons of patience and virtue right?....hotheads on BOTH sides contrinbuted to a wholly unworthy amount of bloodshed....they didn't call them RADICAL republicans without reason..hell, they even were hostile to Abe as a soft buffoon in their self righteous eyes....you guys today are cut from the same cloth btw...scratch a south basher here and he bleeds social lib blood time and again. "What culture war, shucks I only care about all that nasty stuff those Nazi Southerners did to the great Black Man..blah, blah, blah".
and btw if Douglas was so great then why wasn't he good enough for the ever full of himself Yankee?
none of ya'll voted for the somebeach either hoss...only Missouri.
PS: I fart in your general direction.
Bull. Slaves suffered infant mortality rates twice those of whites. Factor those deaths into the average and the slave life span was about 22 years. 46% of slaves never made it past their 15th birthday.
Additionally, southern whites had a lower life expectancy than northern whites. The overall life expectancy in the US in 1860 was about 42 years.
Defense alone doesn't win wars, we must attack (and follow-up after we put the skeer on 'em)
We must keep and maintain the manufacturing base
Communications are vital
Build a strong bench, when the all-stars are out, strong leaders need to step in
The Southern descendents of Ulster-Scots are a fierce people with long memories. Deo Vindice.
The story that caused this thread to be posted was nothing but Northern bashing to begin with. We just want equal time.
Source please.
Hear Hear.
Documented historical fact. Look it up for yourselves
I did and it's not. Lincoln didn't say that.
There are reports of him saying something similar, "What will become of my tariff?" to John B. Baldwin, who later became a Confederate Colonel, but they aren't confirmed.
Postwar memories can be deceptive, especially if you lost the war.
He wanted to deport their as*ses and he also stated they were not to be equal. Go ahead and deny that.
The first is easy to deny. Lincoln believed in and supported voluntary emigration. In that he was no different than men like Robert Lee, James Monroe, or John Breckernridge. Given the alternatives - a life of bondage in the south or facing the virulent racism that existed throughout the South and which was almost as bad in the North - where was that such an evil project?
As for the second, Lincoln also said that blacks were the equal of whites in a number of important ways. As he put it, "...in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, (the black man) is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." Can you provide a quote from any Southern leader indicating that the black man was his equal in any way? Of course you can't.
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